


A Gulf of Civil Horror

by zapdosmaster145



Category: Phineas and Ferb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-06-05 05:48:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 33,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15164006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zapdosmaster145/pseuds/zapdosmaster145
Summary: Sequel to Under Absolute Despotism. In 2049, Perry's cloned son PJ is trying to make a new life for himself with his new family, the Flynns. While Isabella is President of the US, protecting his family means protecting his country—especially with Suzy Johnson still on the loose. Can he prevent a horrifying alternate timeline from becoming a reality?





	1. Chapter 1

Prologue

Newburgh, about 60 miles north of New York City  
Saturday, March 8, 1783

Colonel Timothy Pickering was no longer a busy man now that the war was over. Not many of the officers or soldiers were. Another harsh New England winter had reduced the army to spending their time building huts and cabins throughout the encampment when they weren’t huddled around a fire or conducting their daily training drills. As Quartermaster General, it was Pickering’s job to oversee the training and quartering of the troops, though by now his training regimen had fallen into more of a routine to keep order and remind the men they were still an army than in being an exercise to prepare them for any more actual combat. And while it had been another cold winter, it was not nearly as devastating as in years past; the French had provided generous funds and other provisions so Congress could at least afford to feed and clothe the men. The camp was better suited and had built most of the structures they needed last summer, leaving Pickering, like all the rest of the soldiers, with nothing to do but wait.

It had been months since the fighting had all but ended. The final battle against the British occurred in October 1781, when General Cornwallis was forced to surrender at Yorktown. Peace negotiations with Britain were ongoing half a world away, though hearsay was that a treaty was nearing completion. Potentially King George could have in fact already signed it by now, but it took weeks for news to travel across the Atlantic. Word of peace could arrive tomorrow, or in a year. And despite the fact that there had been one or two minor skirmishes here and there, for all intents and purposes the war was over. Congress knew it, the men knew it, the country knew it. Pickering prayed to God that official word would arrive before planting season, in time for the men to go home to their farms. They could not disband the army until the treaty was signed and the last of the redcoats were on ships sailing for England. That was what they were waiting for.

It was all Pickering could do to keep himself and the men busy, or at least occupied, for as the saying goes, idle hands are the devil’s workshop.

Training drills had become perfunctory. Rebuilding and maintaining the troops’ quarters had become more of a chore than a necessity. And the first signs of spring had made their mark on the landscape, warming the air and melting the snow. The men were growing tired and impatient. Brought on by boredom, and the desire to be reunited with their families and move on with their lives, a shadow of rebellion was forming over the camp. There was something else, too.

A _BANG!_ from outside his cabin interrupted Pickering from his thoughts. Immediately recognizing the sound of a pistol firing, he set his quill back in its ink bottle, put aside the letter he had been writing, and stood to go find the source of the noise.

A hundred yards away, Pickering saw a group gathered together, looking on at something in their midst. He hurried closer. “What happened?” asked a soldier when he hit the wall of onlookers, but Pickering ignored the man and shouldered his way through the crowd.

Suddenly the throng around him began to part. Pickering looked up and saw a head and pair of shoulders floating over the men, coming his way. He recognized them as belonging to their beloved General, George Washington. The giant of a man looked livid, having apparently been at the center of whatever dispute had just occurred. Pickering, like the others, scooted out of Washington’s way as his long legs strode past, a hush falling over the crowd. Pickering turned his head the other way and glimpsed a distressed looking man fallen to the ground before being blocked out of sight again by the crowd. Pickering caught the man standing next to him by the elbow and whispered in his ear. “Did you see what happened?”

“Aye,” the man responded, slightly louder now to be heard over others who had begun whispering and talking again, now that Washington had left. “That chap over there,” he jabbed a thumb over his shoulder, at, Pickering presumed, the man who had fallen on the ground, “he owed some money to a bloke from Virginia, and they got in a tussle over it. General Washington broke ‘em up by firing his pistol in the air.”

“Ah,” Pickering said, quickly forming an image in his mind’s eye. “Another gambling incident.” Washington hated the practice and had issued orders for gambling in all forms to be forbidden in the army. That didn’t keep a number of the men from still playing cards when they had a few empty hours, which was common these days.

“I don’t think so, sir,” the man said. “I believe he owed him a fair loan. He wouldn’t pay it; General Washington got angry and picked him up by his coat, then the bloke mentioned Robert Morris’ resignation, and the General must’ve not heard the news yet, because then he just dropped him and walked off.”

Pickering did a double take. “Did you say Robert Morris resigned?”

“Aye, word arrived from General Gates’ camp about an hour ago. Now that’s curious; if General Gates knew, why not General Washington?”

To Pickering, the better question was, why had Morris resigned? Robert Morris was well known as one of the wealthiest businessmen in Philadelphia, and an active supporter of the war. As the Superintendent of Finance, the Articles of Confederation gave him responsibility over handling the financial matters of Congress, the army, and much more. His resignation was troubling, especially now, of all times. The army expected payment for their services, Morris was head of the committee charged to oblige. In the past, Congress had forgotten them time and time again; this news made him worried it was happening once more.

The crowd was quickly dispersing, including the man Pickering had questioned. He made to return to his quarters, but as he mulled over this distressing bit of news, he decided he would head toward Gates’ camp instead. He fetched his horse and rode the three-mile distance through the sloshy ground.

He tied his horse to a tree stump outside the second camp and hadn’t finished stretching his legs when a man Pickering recognized walked up to him and extended a hand.

“Major Armstrong,” Pickering addressed the man, shaking his proffered hand. “What is General Gates having you do for him these days? Fetch water for his dogs? Put on puppet shows to entertain the men?” Major John Armstrong Jr. was one of General Gates’ aides. The two had met when Armstrong had come to Pickering in need of parchment for Gates, who meant to write a letter to Brigadier General Henry Knox, giving Knox his recommendation on what military tactics he should have used, rather than follow Washington’s orders at the battle of Trenton, despite Washington’s crushing victory.

Armstrong chuckled. “I should say you owe me a glass of scotch for insulting our work,” he responded. “You know there is still much business to attend to before this war is over.”

“So the rumors are true, then? Robert Morris has resigned?”

“Indeed they are,” Armstrong said, slapping Pickering on the shoulder. “Come, let us talk of these matters inside. I am glad to see you, we could use a mind like yours for this.”

Pickering wasn’t sure what Armstrong meant by that, or why he didn’t seem as concerned about this news as he should have been, yet he let him lead him to his tent near the center of camp. Armstrong folded back the flap and allowed Pickering to enter first. There were three other men inside, standing in a circle, talking amongst themselves. The discussion halted when they looked up and saw them entering.

“Gentlemen,” Armstrong said, “this is Timothy Pickering, an acquaintance of mine. This is Christopher Richmond, William Barber, and William Eustis,” He pointed at each of the men in turn, and Pickering shook hands with them.

“Timothy Pickering, the Quartermaster General?” the one named Richmond asked.

“The very same,” Pickering said.

The three men gave a respectful nod. “Good, good.” Richmond gave Pickering’s hand an extra pump.

Armstrong cleared his throat. “Now now, we are meeting here not as soldiers, but as concerned citizens.” Armstrong scooted a wooden chair out from his desk to take a seat. On this cue, the other men found places to sit. One took a footstool, one sat on a rug covering the ground. Pickering leaned back and placed some of his weight on the desk. Everyone now more comfortable, Armstrong continued. “We all know that there is only one reason why Morris would resign: it is because he knows Congress won’t pay us. After all these years and this nation giving its best blood to bring independence to these states, the greedy politicians can’t get off their fat arses to pay us. They have never cared about the soldiers, or the army, they merely use us for their own gain. They profit on the war and then leave us to starve, freeze, and die of malaria.”

“Here!” the three men shouted. Pickering warily nodded in agreement.

Armstrong’s voice rose. “I have heard, in my many conversings with General Gates, that the General knew Robert Morris to be a wise man, one who understood and empathized with the many plights of this army. He is a true patriot, who unlike the rest of Congress, has given all that he has to the cause of liberty, for as you know, Morris was a self-made, wealthy businessman. The rumor is he has given so much of his wealth and plenty to the cause that he is near bankrupt, and the rest of the stubborn politicians refusing to reach into their own purses for even a penny has fanned his anger to the boiling point.

“For a truth, General Gates confided in me that Congress has shut down Morris’ repeated attempts to pass legislature for the rightful payment of this army. I surmise that once King George signs the treaty, Congress expects us to disband so that they might forget about us, for once we lay down our arms, we have no more power to exact our proper dues.”

Barber slammed his fist into his open palm. “Those fools! Those drunken fools! What do they take us for?”

“God knows if we know it, every man in this camp knows it,” Richmond growled. “If I don’t get my pay at the end of all this, I will take my musket to Philadelphia myself to get it, at the point of bayonet if I have to!”

“Here!” “Here!”

“What about General Washington?” Pickering cut in over the shouting. “Congress will listen to him, long has he pled our cause and they have acquiesced.”

“Too long, I think,” Armstrong said. “Congress is wearied with his constant and incessant pleadings. He has lost all favor with them, dragging them to do this or that like an ox drags a plow. I tell you, they are tired of it!”

“Besides,” Eustis added, “Washington is too conservative with his demands. Why, if he stormed Congress the way he stormed Cornwallis at Yorktown, he could have them begging to serve his every whim and pleasure. He could be king, but he won’t take a crown if he were offered all the world’s riches and fine lands!”

“Agreed,” Armstrong said. “Washington has done a great service for this country, but he is not fit for the delicacy of the situation.”

“Then we are doomed,” commented Richmond.

The room turned quiet. Pickering found the anger in the room contagious, filling his soul with fury like the others. Although he shared their anger, he did not like the dark mood of the room. He stood and clenched his fists in his pockets. “These are distressing times,” he said. “Even after the war is over, it seems we still must go on fighting tyranny in our midst! Dirty Tories!” Seething, he flipped aside the tent door flap and walked out. Pickering found his way back to his horse and spurred it off in the direction of his camp, hoping to outrun his feelings.

Still inside the tent, Armstrong huddled with his would-be co-conspirators. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I may know something we can do about this.”

* * *

 A stormy Sunday’s winds and rains kept all men not posted on duty inside after the morning services. The news about Robert Morris was naturally the leading topic of discussion among the troops, Pickering found as did his rounds. Many of the conversations he either overheard or took part in had little variation from the talk the previous day in Armstrong’s tent. Rumors were flying that it was universally expected the army would not disband until they had obtained justice. Pickering’s experience had taught him that the men regularly got upset about political news, but this time it was affecting them even more than usual. The way he saw it, if they really intended to band together against the highest governing body in the land, the very act was, by definition, treasonous, just though he agreed their case to be. Either this was going to turn out to be all talk and would blow over soon, or mob mentality might take over and this could become a very serious affair.

The next morning, he had no doubt which of the two it would be.

The skies had cleared overnight. The sun’s golden rays twinkled brightly on the rippling Hudson as it rose across the far side of the river. This morning’s general orders were delivered to the adjutant’s office, per usual. As was customary, leading officers were lined up in the small field just outside the office to receive their orders for the day. Pickering waited among them, knowing everyone gathered here was most eager for news on the financial situation. Finally, the papers arrived. The reader stepped up on a log platform with the documents in his hand and read in a loud voice for all the men to hear.

“General orders, March 10, 1783. The Commander in Chief recommends uniformity in the mode of…”

Pickering glossed over the beginning. Many of the orders weren’t new. Reminders of watch shifts, protocols for the division of labor, a slight change in meal times, a note that soldiers should keep their hair clipped short, such minutia hardly concerned him. He felt the men around him grow restless, as did the reader, who hurried through the general orders. Before long, he had reached the end of the parchment.

“With the highest regards and esteem,” he read, “signed, your Commander-in-Chief, George Washington.”

The men, Pickering included, looked around at each other, wearing bemused expressions. _That was it?_

Clearing his throat, the reader then cried, “I have also received a certain anonymous letter.” He shuffled papers around in his hands and held a new page up to the light. “To the officers of the army: Gentlemen, a fellow soldier, whose interest and affections bind him strongly to you, whose past sufferings have been as great, and whose future fortune may be as desperate as yours—would beg leave to address you.”

Everyone held their breath as the reader continued. This was a peculiar moment. These morning briefings were supposed to be for official orders—for an unnamed soldier to address the officers in a letter like this was, while not unheard of, unusual nonetheless.

The letter quickly turned charged with inflammatory rhetoric. After it recalled the army’s suffering and glory, it compared them with ‘the coldness and severity of government,’ and the country’s ingratitude to the men who had placed it ‘in the chair of independency.’

“And peace returns again to bless—whom? A country willing to redress your wrongs, cherish your worth and reward your service? Is this the case? Or is it rather a country that tramples upon your rights, disdains your cries and insults your distresses?”

Pickering was reminded of his conversation in Armstrong’s tent. It was becoming clear to him that the intent of the writer of this letter matched Armstrong’s. One glance showed him the officers in his midst were also nodding in approval.

“If this, then, be your treatment, while the swords you wear are necessary for the defense of America, what have you to expect from peace, when your voice shall sink, and your strength dissipate by division?” There it was, this letter’s true message. When the army gives up its sword, it will give up its power to claim its rightful dues, should the people fail them.

“When those very swords, the instruments and companions of your glory, shall be taken from your sides, can you then consent to be the only sufferers of this revolution, and retiring from the field, grow old in poverty, wretchedness, and contempt? If your spirit should revolt to this, oppose tyranny under whatever garb it may assume; whether it be the plain coat of republicanism, or the splendid robe of royalty!”

The meaning couldn’t be plainer. The letter was calling the army to revolt against Congress if it wasn’t paid. The treasonous language which, till now, had only been heard in whispers, was being uttered openly.

It’s point now clear, the letter moved on to its closing remarks. “A meeting of the general and field officers is requested at the public building, on Tuesday next, at 11 o’clock, to consider the late letter from our representatives in Philadelphia, and what measures, if any, should be adopted, to obtain that redress of grievances which they seem to have solicited in vain.” After delivering one final charge to the army to push Congress to agree to their demands by peace or by war, the letter abruptly ended.

Like a wildfire, copies of this letter spread throughout the entire camp, and its words had sounded in every ear long before the sun had set.

* * *

 Pickering was writing in his cabin that afternoon when he heard a knock at his door. “Come in,” he answered. Major Armstrong let himself in. Pickering put aside his quill and rose to meet him. “Major Armstrong, you must be pleased with the direction the mood in this camp is turning.”

“Always straight to the point, aren’t you?” Armstrong replied. “Never any time for small talk?”

“The army has turned me into an efficient man,” Pickering decided. “I don’t always have the time for manners.” He motioned for Armstrong to take a seat across from him, and sat back down at his desk. “Frankly, though, the anonymous letter that arrived this morning has caused my soul to seep into a black abyss, which is what I must blame for my shortness of patience today.”

“Why is that, old friend?” Armstrong asked.

Pickering took a moment to compose his thoughts. “I suppose its intent is just and true, at its core. Congress has wronged this army too many times to count. If it can’t even pay these men for their valiance and courage, this nation would be truly ungrateful. To rise up against our own brethren, though? It undermines the very ideals we have been fighting Britain for.”

“Do you see any other option?”

Pickering sighed. “If Congress refuses to pay, no. No, I don’t.”

The two men sat in silence for a while. Armstrong offered a cigar, Pickering declined, so he lit it and took a deep drag. “Look,” Armstrong said, “I do not like it either, but when Congress dismisses and ignores our service to this country, I see no difference between our republic and Britain’s monarch. If our own government—how did the Declaration of Independence put it? ‘Evinces a design to reduce us under absolute despotism’—we should fight on for our freedom. The revolution must continue until all men are equal.”

Pickering nodded. “No government is perfect. Not even ours.”

Armstrong took a long look around the cabin. “Suppose Congress does renege on their promise to pay us, and the army has no choice but to march on Philadelphia. Would you be with us?”

“Us?” Pickering stated hesitantly.

“Come now, you know where I stand on this issue.” Armstrong folded under Pickering’s stare. “All right, let’s just say I may know the man who wrote the letter. Look, I know it sounds treasonous, but if we want America’s future to be the future we’ve been fighting this entire war for, we have to consider all possibilities. If Washington fails to secure Congress’s support and the army’s payment, we must turn to somebody else who will not fail us. We must turn to General Gates.”

So this was what Armstrong had come to talk about, Pickering realized. The man had always been deeply loyal to Gates.

“Gates has the leadership this army needs right now,” Armstrong was saying. “He will do what we know Washington cannot. He will fight Congress tooth and nail to get this army what it deserves.”

“He may drive a wedge through the heart of this country while doing it,” Pickering warned.

“A wedge will form if he doesn’t do it,” countered Armstrong. “We were lucky to win this war, and Britain knows it. They will come back, whether it be ten, twenty, or fifty years for now. And when the next war with Britain begins, who will fight it if everyone remembers how Congress forgot its own militia?”

Pickering rested his chin in his hand in thought.

“I want you to see the full import of this moment,” Armstrong said, leaning forward. “In the very likely event that Congress decides not to pay us, there is going to be an uprising of the army. I think that after today’s letter, nothing is stopping that. You are going to have to decide which side of history you want to be on, Timothy. Horatio Gates will be remembered, revered, by generations to come, for bravely fighting tyranny in all forms. George Washington will fade into obscurity and be forgotten. Mark my words, this is how history will remember them! General Gates is this country’s future, and the army will be his glory! Trust me, his camp is where true greatness awaits.”

Pickering wasn’t as certain as his associate. “I will sleep on it, I think,” he told his friend, “and wait and see a little longer. The letter called a summons for tomorrow, and if I know General Washington, he will not stand idly by.”

Armstrong nodded and stood to leave. “I know you are friends with Washington; but you should reconsider if he is up to this challenge. He may have the men’s love, just remember. The purse always has a more powerful effect on history than anything else.”

Pickering bowed his head in thought as his friend departed.

* * *

 When the general orders arrived the next morning, the Commander-in-Chief acknowledged the anonymous letter and the meeting it called for that very day; however, while giving the meeting his sanction, he also moved it to Saturday so that it could be held with proper deliberation, letting the passions of the officers cool that reason might prevail. Pickering saw Armstrong once more that week. Pickering reaffirmed that he wanted to see Washington’s response before he picked a side. Armstrong argued that Washington appeared to be on his side. After all, if the General opposed it, why would he go through with holding the meeting? What difference did it make whether it was held on Tuesday or Saturday? Besides, Washington had indicated in his orders that he would not be in attendance anyways. The officer in charge would therefore be General Gates. Armstrong was convinced that Gates would seize this moment to take command of the army, with or without Washington’s approval. To Pickering, it was hard to pick which was the worst of two evils.

* * *

Saturday, March 15, 1783  
The Temple, Newburgh, NY

The “Temple of Virtue,” “Temple,” or “New Building,” as it was most commonly called, was a 40-by-70-foot lodge resting in a grassy meadow about two miles southwest of the site of General Washington’s office headquarters. Recently built as a meetinghouse for the army, it served many functions: a place of worship, a meeting hall, a commissary and mess hall, sometimes it even held dances and parties. This was where the officer’s meeting was to be held. Pickering had arrived a few minutes early, and he was glad he did. The meeting was scheduled to start at noon; when his pocket watch read five till, the building had already been filled to standing room only.

Outside it was a sunny day, one of the warmest of the year so far, but with no windows, the Temple had to be lit by torch. Pickering was located in a corner of the single large, square room, able to see the lectern at the front. General Gates was standing on the stage, waiting for the meeting to begin. Major Armstrong was seated behind Gates, preparing to take notes of the proceedings. At exactly twelve o’clock, Gates snapped his pocket watch shut, slid it in his coat, and rose to call the meeting to order.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” he roared in a booming voice. The talk obediently petered out. “This meeting of the general officers of the army, held to discuss the necessary measures to be taken against Congress to ensure the just payment of this army, is called to order on this, the fifteenth of March, in the year of our Lord, one thousand, seven hundred and eighty-three.” Behind him, Armstrong was scratching away on his notes.

Gates cleared his throat. “Our Congress, the high seat of the government of these United States, has betrayed us.” A blast of jeers and boos sounded from the crowd. Pickering observed with reserved caution.

“They treat us like an old horse!” More jeers and yells. “To be shot when its usefulness has ended!” A fleck of spit flew from his lips. The men were pumping their fists in anger, shouting their approval of his words. A tingle of fear shivered down Pickering’s spine. This crowd was ready for blood, and Gates held the men in his hands like a potter kneading clay.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” Gates held up his hands to pause the clamoring. “I say Congress cannot hear words, only action!” He smugly stood up straight, with arms clasped behind his back, as the officers banged and yelled below him.

All at once, the room went silent. The tall visage of George Washington, seemingly from nowhere, strode to the stage at the front. Gates’ puffed-up demeanor instantly deflated.

"Sir,” Gates uttered, addressing his superior officer, “you were not expected at this meeting.”

Washington stepped on to the platform to tower over Gates. In a quiet voice, almost a whisper, belying his size, he simply replied, “Nevertheless, I am here.”

Gates had no choice but to step aside and let Washington have the floor.

Washington calmly pulled a slip of paper from his coat pocket. “An anonymous letter to the officers of the army,” he read. He paused, looking up. “You have all read this?”

The crowd muttered a general assent.

Washington glanced back down. “Broadside, given to all officers, except your Commander-in-Chief. How inconsistent with the rules of propriety, how unmilitary and how subversive to all order and discipline!” His voice raised sharply with each word. He looked over the officers once more. None in the room could meet his sharp gaze.

He continued. “It calls for the army to take over the government.”

“Yes!” They returned more vocally, this time.

“I quote, ‘If peace comes, never sheathe your swords until you have obtained what is your right.”

“It is our right!” shouted the mob.

“Your right!?” Washington roared above the din. “My god, what can this writer want? Is he a friend to the army?”

“Yes!”

“A friend of this country?”

“Yes!”

“No, damn him! He’s a foe!”

The men in the room began to murmur their dissent among themselves.

“Perhaps he is an agent from the British!” Washington had to shout over the noise again. “Plotting our ruin by creating discord between the civil and the military!”

One of the men in the crowd raised the nerve to shout back. “If you will not lead us, sir, stand aside!”

“I will not stand aside,” Washington leered, pointing at the man with his finger. “And if you try and silence me, you are asking for a nation in which freedom of speech is taken away, and dumb and silent we are led like sheep to the slaughter!”

No one in the room made a peep after that.

“You will not march on Philadelphia,” Washington ordered, crumpling up the letter and throwing it to the floor. The room was so quiet a dropped pin could have been heard.

“You are men of honor,” said Washington. “You know that if any army be allowed to terrorize civilian government for political ends, the future of this country will be throw into a gulf of civil horror! I know you, I have fought beside you, I have listened to your cries, I’ve grieved with you, and we are bound together in a sacred brotherhood of free men. Be true to it, and you will be true to yourselves! True to the highest aspirations of these United States!”

The General took a sweeping gaze around the room. Though no one dared to speak against him, he could still see the anger in their eyes. Their red faces were lined in mutiny. The tension in the room was thick enough to cut with a knife.

“I have a letter,” Washington said, changing tactics, and extracting another paper from his pockets, “from a member of Congress, and they are trying to do justice to this army!”

Pickering bowed his head. He could feel it in the people around him. They were shifting, shuffling, seething. Washington’s opportunity was passed. Nobody was listening anymore. In another minute or so, Pickering believed they might even attack Washington.

At the moment he had glanced away, Pickering heard the strangest sound come from General Washington. It was a grunt of—surprise? His eyes snapped back to attention.

General Washington was oscillating the paper near and far to his face, squinting, apparently struggling to read it. He held it this way and that, trying to catch the torchlight better. Then, with a befuddled look, he set the paper aside and looked up at the crowd.

“Gentlemen,” he said, in that same quiet, humble voice he used before, “you’ll permit me to put on my spectacles.” He sunk a hand into his coat’s inside pocket. Withdrawing a pair of readers, he clumsily balanced them on his nose. “For you see,” he added, looking over the rim of the lens at his men, “I have grown not only gray, but almost blind in service of my country.”

He picked the paper back up and quietly read it to the men, but Pickering couldn’t hear what was said. The men around him were gasping, whispering, even sobbing. It was a sight unlike any other—their brave commander, who had risked more for this war than any other man—seeing him require assistance to read a simple letter was as shocking to them as if he had suddenly began levitating.

Pickering remembered that when Congress had asked Washington to lead the army, the General had only asked in return that he would not be paid for his services. He loved his country, he loved his men, and Pickering knew they knew it. How could they have forgotten what they were fighting for? Not money, but for freedom, for justice. There was no freedom or justice in staging a coup d’état.

Pickering could tell, as could Washington, that this sight had had a profound effect on the men. They were shaken. Many of the men were weeping. All thirst for blood and violence had totally lost its momentum. Even General Gates wore shame in his eyes. Washington nodded to his aide, Alexander Hamilton, and quickly finished his speech. Without further remark, he left the building, and a profound silence hung in the air.

Henry Knox stepped up when Gates seemed unable to speak. “I motion a call for vote,” he said. “That the army stays its course, and does not march on Philadelphia.”

Many seconds rang through the room.

“All in favor, say ‘Aye.’”

“Aye!”

“All opposed, say ‘Nay.’”

Nothing. The vote was unanimous.

The meeting was quickly brought to a close. An inexplicable feeling lingered in the men’s hearts as the Temple was emptied and they made their way back to their campsites. Pickering still couldn’t believe what he saw. A storming angry mob calmed by naught but a few words of their loving leader. It seemed nearly as miraculous to him as when Christ calmed a raging, stormy sea. That was the respect that this army had for George Washington. A great crisis had been averted. Though it occurred to him that such a complete reversal was a little hypocritical of the men, Pickering was thankful.

* * *

 News that peace with Great Britain had been reached arrived at Congress on April 11 and made its way to the army shortly. The Treaty of Paris was officially signed on September 3, and the continental army disbanded not long after. Ultimately, they were recompensed five year’s full pay for their services by Congress. On December 23, Washington arrived at Congress to resign from his commission as Commander-in-Chief, a final act solidifying his loyalty to the republic and also his personal honor. He arrived at his home at Mount Vernon and saluted his beloved wife, Martha, on Christmas Eve.

This glossed over story in American history, despite its neglect, is regarded by historians as a crucial tipping point. This portrayal may put the Continental Congress in a bad light, a light the army would view their motives from—in actuality, Congress was simply, utterly broke. Under the Articles of Confederation, it had limited power to tax, and had already amassed heavy debts to France to support the war. Additionally, America had learned to fear the presence of a standing army, and some of the states held steep reservations against funding a Continental Army, afraid of the connection such an entity had with corrupt bureaucracy. And for good reason. Had the army revolted against its own government, the American experiment would have failed as soon as it had begun. A complete takeover without Washington’s leadership was unlikely—even the greatest army in the world, that of Great Britain, couldn’t corner the congressional body to force a surrender, the land was simply too vast. Washington’s commanding respect of virtually the entire nation, on the other hand, could have potentially made a coup a success. Had he desired it, he could have crowned himself monarch. He was already worshiped by the majority of Americans. Washington’s virtue, humility in greatness, and dedication to the ideals of freedom and democracy saved America at this, as well as at many other moments in its founding.

A comparable chronicle from history is the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte. Similarly a brilliant general and beloved war hero, his takeover of the military was instrumental in his conduction of the coup d’état that ended the French Revolution. The French Revolution had begun on a similar premise to the American Revolution, but the end result was vastly different: rather than founding a democracy, it became a military dictatorship. Even after the overthrow of Napoleon, France would struggle to imitate America’s level of success in the democratic experiment for many years. It is hard to say America would have had a similar fate had the Newburgh Conspiracy been a success, but we can be certain that military and civil relations would have been strained if Washington had failed to prevent this coup. The United States Constitution would probably never have been created, and the Union would have remained weak and small and relatively unimportant in world events, if it lasted at all under the Articles of Confederation.

* * *

Bibliography

The Inside History of the Newburgh Conspiracy: America and the Coup d’Etat, by Richard H. Kohn:  
[ https://www.jstor.org/stable/1918650 ](https://www.jstor.org/stable/1918650)

Wikipedia article on the Newburgh Conspiracy:  
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newburgh_Conspiracy>

Story of the Newburgh Conspiracy as told by Professor James Kirby Martin, historian, University of Houston:  
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhnZrEDfXVI&t=2913s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhnZrEDfXVI&t=2913s)

Dramatization of the Newburgh Conspiracy (starts at 15:35):  
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaJQ76Gql0g&index=13&list=PL23861968A367524D](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaJQ76Gql0g&index=13&list=PL23861968A367524D)

Wikipedia article on Timothy Pickering:  
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Pickering ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Pickering)

General orders, Monday, March 10, 1783:  
[https://www.loc.gov/resource/mgw3g.007/?sp=83&st=text](https://www.loc.gov/resource/mgw3g.007/?sp=83&st=text)

Armstrong’s anonymous letter to the army:  
<http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-newburgh-address/>

Details on the Temple of Virtue:  
<https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/washington_temple_of_virtue/>

The Newburgh Address (George Washington’s speech):  
<https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Newburgh_address>

On the Newburgh Address, see also:  
<https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/newburgh-address/>

Details about the Treaty of Paris:  
[ https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/paris.html ](https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/paris.html)

George Washington wiki:  
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington>

Map of the Winter Cantonment of 1783, by Simon DeWitt  
[ https://www.pinterest.com/pin/139259813451477404/ ](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/139259813451477404/)


	2. Chapter 2

Conspirium Warehouse Lot, not far outside New York City  
September 17, 2049

"All teams, check in!"

"Waters and Olsen, locked and loaded!"

"Eliot here, Ramirez here!"

"Tui and Willy are good to go."

"This is Coombs, Lee is getting the perimeter ready."

PJ scanned the monitors in front of him. Each screen was a direct feed from the body cams worn by every member of his small but fierce strike team, eight screens in total.

"All right," PJ said, "Lee, we're all waiting on you!"

"Don't worry, this Conspirium outpost is coming down soon enough." Lee's screen showed he was handling a mounted metal turret that came to a point with a satellite dish. The dish was aimed at the warehouse facade. "Firing on my mark," Lee said over the radio comms. "Three, two, one. Fire!"

A red beam of light shot out of the turret with a  _pew!_ The laser struck the face of the warehouse, and the building instantly liquified and melted like a chocolate bar under a high-powered lamp heater.

"It's a hit!" Lee whooped.

PJ applied his finger against his earpiece. "All strike teams, go, go, GO!"

Thousands of gallons of brown liquid flushed across the warehouse lot, carrying everything in its wake. Furniture, crates, desks and chairs, people sloshing and splashing to get their heads above the flood. PJ's team emerged from their hiding spots to charge into the pandemonium, their firearms set to stun, efficiently hitting their targets' bodies with every shot. The watery slush spread and the flood lost power, and the people who hadn't been hit yet climbed to their feet and ran the other direction―only to find themselves flanked by another strike team member and stunned.

Those who were hit by the stunners discovered the "bullets" didn't penetrate, but only delivered a series of sharp, electric impulses, causing the recipient to convulse violently and drop to the ground, immobilized. In seconds, this fate had befallen two-thirds of the Conspirium members who had been washed out, the agents bearing down on the rest.

One of the last Conspirium terrorists still on his feet had ducked and dodged out of sight long enough to make it to a rack of rifles that had been flipped over in the deluge. He found a sophisticated looking machine large enough to hide himself behind and cradled the weapon in his arms, scanning his surroundings.

Eliot raised his barrel toward an exposed man who was crawling away with his pants around his ankles. Apparently, his final peaceful moments had been spent sitting on the porcelain throne when the ambush had begun. With a smirk, Eliot pulled the trigger and watched the man wriggle and writhe.

"I didn't expect to have a stakeout with a guy who literally has his 'stake' out," Eliot chuckled, making sure his body cam got a good look at his work. It cost him when the man with a rifle jumped out and raised his barrel to aim.

"Eliot! Watch out!" Ramirez dove to shove her partner out of harm's way. The bullet lodged into her calf as she and Eliot hit the ground. Ramirez grabbed her leg and cried out in agony.

"Ramirez!" PJ called out, helplessly removed from the situation. "Are you all right? Eliot, get her out of there!"

Eliot rolled, with Ramirez in his arms, behind an overturned table just as more bullets streaked past him.

"I'm fine!" Ramirez snarled, pushing Eliot off of her. "Don't read anything into this," she added, holding her leg with one hand, jabbing a finger in his chest with the other. "I saved your life because you're my partner! Out of professional obligation, you hear? I still don't like you, and I still won't go out with you!"

"Oh, c'mon!" Eliot said, before popping up from cover to put two stunners in the man's chest. He turned back to Ramirez. "You literally just took a bullet for me! I think that the lady-like thing to do would be to accept my offer to take you out to dinner. It's the least I could do to thank you for saving my life!"

"I said no!"

"At least a drink?"

At that moment, the comms crackled noisily. "All clear," Tui's husky voice announced.

"Olsen," PJ said, "Ramirez needs medical."

"On it," Olsen answered.

"I'm fine!" Ramirez repeated herself. "It's just a flesh wound, I could still kick the crap out of any of you with this leg."

PJ flipped a switch and the monitors folded away behind a wall. He opened a door, and the invisible van he had been working from gave away its faint outline when he and the rest of its innards appeared into view across the street. He shut the door, and the optical illusion readjusted and instantly corrected itself, and the automobile vanished once more.

PJ the Platypus was the spitting image of Perry, his fa―well, it was more complicated than that. The world's first cloned platypus supersoldier, he was trained at the OWCA before joining the Secret Service upon graduating with top marks. Just a few brief months ago, President Isabella Flynn had set him up over a task force charged with finding the secret organization known as the Conspirium and bringing them to justice.

Walking up to inspect the scene, PJ didn't bother trying to avoid the leftover reddish-brown puddles of slurry, indifferently splashing through it like it wasn't there. He checked each of the Conspirium prisoners he passed, making sure they weren't hurt badly. "Every Conspirium member captured, zero casualties, how's Ramirez's leg?"

Olsen gave him the thumbs up. A fresh strip of gauze was wrapped up and down her calf.

"Good work, team," PJ summed up. "Now let's load 'em up and get 'em outta here."

A hovercraft the size of a Boeing was approaching. PJ organized his crew as they arrested everyone they had stunned and moved them on to the ship, which had set down where the warehouse used to be. While Olsen continued his checkup on Ramirez, the rest of his team did the hard work of hauling every limp body up the ramp. Tui and Willey, the big guys, were strong enough to carry two at a time. They had detained twenty-five Conspirium prisoners by the time they were done. Other government workers who had arrived on board the ship were inspecting the warehouse supplies the Conspirium had been holding here, cataloging and acquisitioning them as they went.

All in all, it was a successful raid. There was only one thing missing: Suzy Johnson. According to their intel, she should have been here. She slipped away once again. PJ oversaw the final cleanup and readied his team for transport back to Washington, knowing that without her, they still didn't have any real leads.

* * *

Ramirez was able to walk to her seat, albeit with a pronounced limp, and strap herself in unassisted. She would take her muscle tissue regenerators before bed and sleep the healing off, then be good as new in the morning. Ramirez was the only woman on PJ's strike team, and her gritty attitude helped her keep ahead of all the boys.

Next to her was Eliot, as usual. PJ worried about assigning them as partners at first, then he simply realized that Eliot flirted this much with every girl he came in contact with. Eliot considered himself the funniest, handsomest, and smartest person in the world. PJ did have to give him credit for being a good soldier, even if his ego tended to take up the entire room.

Buckled across from them were Olsen and Waters. They were the newest additions to his team. Both were dependable, quietly doing their jobs and obeying every order without question―the ideal soldiers. All PJ knew about Waters was that his only daughter was mentally handicapped. According to his file, she was bound to a wheelchair; couldn't speak, couldn't eat, couldn't understand words. He never spoke about what happened. As for Olsen, PJ knew even less about him. He knew he was Catholic, and if Eliot's gossip could be trusted, he was also apparently a good singer.

In the back were Williams and Tuitavuki. Both were at least six-foot-six and pushing three hundred pounds of solid muscle. Although race didn't mean much to PJ other than that it was a subject to be treated with sensitivity around humans, Willy was black and Tui was polynesian. They had been best friends since college, where they met as roommates while playing on the football team. How they both wound up working as field agents for the CIA, and as partners for that matter, PJ couldn't tell. It only drove home the fact that they seemed truly inseparable.

That left Coombs and Lee. Coombs was actually born deaf, and received implants that let him hear. His unique skill for lip reading had come in handy on a recon mission when their listening tech had failed. Speaking of tech, Lee was the one in charge of that. He was the only one on the team who seemed to know how Phineas and Ferb's equipment worked, or who could fix it if it broke. It was only because of Phineas and Ferb's inventions that they had come this far in tracking the Conspirium, PJ knew. If it wasn't for the help of the two greatest scientists and engineers in history, they would have spent the last two months chasing ghosts and shadows.

With a jolt, the hover plane lifted off, taking the team home. Coombs and Lee finally sat down and buckled themselves in.

"Everybody up to get drinks and celebrate when we get back?" Eliot asked.

They all nodded their assent.

"How about you, boss?"

PJ hesitated. "I have a lot of work to do," he equivocated.

"Oh, come on!" Eliot whined. "You literally never celebrate with us! C'mon, this was the biggest bust we've had! You've gotta let loose and have some fun every once in a while, you know!"

With a shake of his head, PJ gave up. "Okay, you're right. This team deserves a little R&R."

"Whoo!" Eliot elbowed Ramirez, who flinched slightly as she pulled a bill out of her pocket and begrudgingly handed it to him. PJ rolled his eyes.

The short flight ended and the bay doors opened up a view of an underground bunker. They disembarked quickly, taking the path through the maze of metal hallways they knew well enough to navigate in the dark. PJ's men parted to hit the showers. Ramirez sighed with relief to put some distance between herself and Eliot.

"Why do I have to be his partner?" she asked PJ as they walked. "It feels like I'm constantly babysitting him.  _Literally._ " She mimicked the way he accented his favorite word.

"Well, you are the only one he listens to," explained the platypus.

"Yeah, only because he hopes I'll give him a kiss if he does." She turned to go to the ladies' room. "If I end up shooting him one of these days, consider it your fault."

PJ stopped by his workstation to glance at the report on what they found at the warehouse. The conclusion the government scientists who had analyzed the Conspirium's confiscated tools, equipment, and parts had come to was that at least some work had been done at the warehouse on trying to replicate a time machine. They had also detected trace amounts of C4, indicating that explosives had been stored there recently. The other most notable impounds were various weapons, though there weren't enough of those to arm more than a small platoon at best. The good news was that they hadn't found any Phineas and Ferb tech. A few guns and bombs were not nearly as dangerous as that would be in the Conspirium's hands, PJ knew.

He paused a moment to fit the pieces together. What was the Conspirium planning to do with these things? A time machine was concerning, but at least he could be sure they didn't have one yet. Was making another attempt at sabotaging the timeline their plan? Maybe set bombs at a time and place in history that suited the Conspirium's agenda? It did line up with what Suzy Johnson had tried to do before. Or, it could have been the leftovers of an attempt to build a time machine, abandoned after Suzy discovered the one in the Danville Museum. PJ felt he was still missing a crucial piece of the puzzle.  _If only we had captured Suzy there,_  he thought.

A notification on his screen caught PJ's eye.  _Team's headed out to celebrate, you promised you'd come._  He reluctantly closed the report and left to go join up with his team.

PJ's personal, platypus-sized flying car followed its automated route while he rested his eyes in his reclined seat. His team had done good work today, PJ was at least pleased with that. He could console himself today that they had done their best. In a job as stressful as his, where every decision could be a matter of national security with millions of lives at stake, that was what kept him treading above the ever rising waters. If he could end the day by looking back on it and knowing he had done his very best, the safety of the world couldn't ask for better than that. Well, it could, but it would have to find someone else for the job.

His flying car parked itself and he stepped out, easily finding the diner his team was meeting at. PJ ignored the strange looks the people passing by gave him, as usual, as he walked through the front door.

A waitress heard the chime from his entrance, then a cross look etched on her face. "Shoo, cat! Get out of here!" She tried to herd him back out the door like a stray.

"First off, I'm not a cat, can't you see this?" He pointed at his backside. "Does this look like a cat's tail to you?"

The waitress wore a startled look, like she'd seen a ghost.

"Yeah, I can talk. Secondly―no, you know what? The talking thing was secondly. Thirdly, I'm with a party, the others should be here by now, so I'd appreciate it if you could show me to their table."

PJ was used to strangers reacting like this. When the waitress didn't move or say anything, he simply walked past her, quickly spotting his team at the bar. "Thanks," he said with an insincere air and a wave before pulling himself up onto a stool next to Eliot.

"Hey boss!" Eliot greeted, slapping PJ on the back. "Glad you could make it. So Ramirez and I were wondering―"

"No I wasn't," Ramirez interjected. "Leave me out of this!"

"Okay, Waters and I were wondering how much you could drink. We would have ordered you one already, but, then we figured, you know what? Even a couple ounces would be like drinking a gallon for a playpus! Literally!" Eliot laughed at himself loudly enough for everyone in the diner to hear.

PJ smirked in spite of himself. It was true, he rarely could finish even a glass of lemonade. He did not give Eliot the pleasure of a verbal response, however.

A heavyset man in an apron shuffled over to the group, as if to service them. PJ noticed he was looking straight at him in particular. "Excuse me," he said as soon as he had everyone's attention. "We don't allow pets in here." He indicated at PJ.

Eliot, the one who's mouth PJ wanted to keep shut the most at this moment, of course spoke up. "Pet, are you crazy? This is PJ the platypus, ever heard of him? You've probably seen him on the news!"

"It's not wearing a service animal vest, so I'm sorry, but you'll have to take it outside."

"Take it out―did you not hear me?" Eliot's voice started to rise. "He's not a pet, he's a person!"

"Stand down, Eliot," PJ said, "It's no big deal. We can work something out here." He turned to the waiter. "Can we talk to the manager, please?"

"I am the manager."

"Okay, look. I have a government issued I.D." He flashed his badge. "I'm a citizen of the United States. I have every right to be here."

"And I have every right to refuse service to freaky animals. You're scaring my customers."

"Scaring?" PJ said, puffing up now. "Has anybody here said anything about being scared? Has anybody screamed? I didn't see or hear anything!" He looked around the room. Some people were watching them now, others were staring fixedly at their plates.

"Now you're making a scene," the manager said. "I swear I will call the cops if you don't leave."

Eliot stood up and slammed his hands down on the counter. "Who do you think you are? I'll have you know we literally work for the CIA, so calling the cops does not threaten us!"

"Stand down," PJ said again, plopping off his stool. "It's not worth it."

"But boss," Eliot took a step back. "You don't deserve to be treated like this! Right guys?"

"For once, I agree with you," Ramirez said.

"Yeah," Willy nodded, and Tui as well. "Me too."

"It's okay, guys. I am used to not belonging." PJ walked out of the diner before anyone could say another word, got in his car, and immediately lifted off. After a few silent moments alone, he slammed his fist against the door. "This is why I don't like going out for drinks," he grunted.


	3. Chapter 3

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.  
September 17, 2049

During periods of high threat levels, the front door of the White House is almost never used by the President of the United States. It's far too public and a safety issue. At these times, when the President arrives or departs, he or she takes one of at least four underground tunnels at random―presumably, more are classified―emerging at secret locations across the capitol. The fact that travel by teleportation is entirely restricted on the premises, even to top officials and the President herself, attests to the many measures that have been taken to make the "great white sepulcher of ambitions," as Harry Truman dubbed it, an impregnable fortress in its own right.

PJ had access to an old pedestrian passage connecting the White House and the Old Executive Office Building next door. The undecorated concrete walls never failed to invite a sense of overwhelming isolation in the folks who traipsed past them, estranging yet connecting one of the most secure places on earth with the wild and scary world.

The passage ended at an elevator that took PJ straight to the second floor of the White House. It slid open to a hallway that couldn't have looked more different than the cold cement one he had just emerged from. Up here, every hallway was like a museum, holding priceless works of art and beautiful furnishings. It was getting late, and PJ still hadn't eaten since leaving the diner, so he crept in the direction of the kitchen for a snack. He was just rounding the corner to the entrance when―

"BOO!"

PJ jumped a foot in the air and landed in an action pose, arms up, ready for a fight. He had to force his reflexes to relax again once he recognized the voice. Marie giggled from somewhere behind him and he felt her arms wrap around his teal body and pick him up, squeezing him tightly.

"PJ! You're home!" she squealed excitedly.

He made an act of struggling to free himself, then gave up. Marie was the only person he allowed hugs from. "Marie, don't you know your bodyguard is the last person you should be sneaking up on?"

"I knew you wouldn't hurt me," she teased, gently putting him back down.

"Just be more careful next time," he said, turning around to face her. Her orange blouse was covered in flour. "What have you been up to?" he inquired, indicating the white blotches.

"I'm cooking dinner! Come look!" She pushed on the free-swinging door to the kitchen and held it for him. "Mom said we're going to eat as a family for once, tonight, and Cathy is helping, see?"

Cathy, the President's personal cook, waved at PJ. "Good to see you again, PJ," she said. "How's your work with the Conspirium going?"

"The details are classified, as always, Little Miss Nosey. But I can at least say, things went well today."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to―"

"It's okay," PJ said, putting up a hand for a gesture of silence. Cathy was always so timid and afraid of offending anyone, she'd apologize for anything that didn't seem to make someone incredibly happy. "I was joking. You didn't do anything wrong." Turning to Marie, he asked, "What do you mean by, 'eating as a family?'"

"Well, you know, like a normal family, gathered around the table for dinner."

"It's past nine o'clock. Kind of late for family dinner."

"Yeah, Mom's working late again, as usual. But she's insisting we do this." She bent down and cupped a hand to whisper in his ear. "All she really wants is to make sure I learn how to cook."

"Ah." PJ inhaled deeply. "Well, it does smell good. What are you making?"

"Secret," Marie grinned devilishly.

PJ rolled his eyes. "Okay. Well, I'm just gonna grab something and head off―"

"What? No, you are not! You'll ruin your appetite!"

PJ gave Marie an incredulous look. "You don't mean―?"

"Of course I do! You're part of the family now, too! That means you come eat with the rest of us at family dinner. Now, go wash your hands, PJ! Go! Go!" She started hustling him out of the kitchen. There was nothing PJ could do to fight it. Just like that, he was back in the hallway again. He tested the door just because, and found that Marie was bracing it.

"March!" she ordered, using a playful tone that still managed to sound similar to the authoritative one her mother regularly used with her. "And don't forget to wash your hands!"

He held up his hands in compliance for her to see through the glass window, then turned and made his way down the hall. He briefly considered not washing them just to irk her, yet soon enough, he found himself doing it anyways. From there, he wandered to the dining room. He heard voices echoing his way as he approached, and upon entering he found Phineas talking on the video phone at the table.

"That's what I told them. For once, it was a good thing we got a down payment on the elephant." Phineas turned to see who had come in. "Hey PJ!" he greeted with a grin. "Come say hi to Ferb!"

PJ stood on the chair next to Phineas and leaned into view. "S'up?" Ferb was living with his wife in Danville, and their hands were full running Summertime Industries without Phineas.

"Ferb and I were just discussing a business issue," Phineas stated. "You see, our company has been dealing with a little bit of courtroom drama for the past week. A woman is suing because our hyperpermiable hydrofoam dinosaurs―you know those toys that are foamy dinosaurs, and you put them in water and they grow from an egg to, say, the size of a loaf of bread? Well, ours grow to  _life_ size. You know, as big as real dinosaurs. Anyways, her toddler left his outside one day, and it rained all night, and it knocked over their powerline as it expanded."

"Was anybody hurt?"

"Fortunately, no, she's just suing for damages."

"Sounds―fun," PJ drawled.

"We do have the legal advantage that the recommended age label, clearly printed on the toy, was above her kid's age, so that should give us some leeway. Sadly, though, we will probably still end up having to scrap the toy from our inventory. The brachiosaurs  _are_ kind of dangerous." The redhead's ever-present smile faded for a moment. Then, it was back. "I bet that's the first time anyone has ever said that a brachiosaurus is more dangerous than a tyrannosaurus!"

Phineas saw movement on Ferb's end. "Oh, it looks like Ferb has to go. Bye, Ferb! We'll talk about it more tomorrow. Good night!" With that, the digital feed collapsed to a dot and vanished. Phineas swiped his tablet, an electronic device similar enough in size and shape to its predecessors of the mid-electronics boom of the '10s, except in that it was far more powerful, entirely clear like glass, and it transformed to a watch and automatically attached itself back to his wrist at his touch.

"So anyways, I saw you had a busy day today, PJ." He turned to give the platypus his full attention. "I presume that the state-of-the-matter transfer device worked out for you?"

"Yes, yes it did." PJ nodded. "We caught the Conspirium completely off guard with it."

"Good," Phineas said. "You know, Ferb and I first invented that machine to help us taste more exotic smoothie flavors as kids. It did accidentally hit Candace, though, but she turned out okay. We never could have guessed back then that we'd end up weaponizing it someday." The inventor paused to sigh. "We never guessed we'd end up weaponizing a lot of things."

PJ tried to reassure him. "It's thanks to your inventions that we're this close to catching Suzy and the Conspirium."

"I know. I just hope that we can go back to using them for fun instead of weapons, someday."

PJ waited a silent moment before he opened his mouth once more. "As soon as we catch Suzy Johnson, you will. Which reminds me, do you have any leads with her?"

"No device I have seems to be able to track her," he admitted. "The photo-transporter has turned up nothing. I even modified the cuteness-tracker to see if that could find anything, to no avail. I guess she's cute on the outside, but rotten on the inside."

None of these invention names made a lick of sense to PJ, so he simply took his word for it.

"Maybe she's got a cloaking device," Phineas was still saying. "Or she could be out of range. Just spitballing, here."

"What's 'out of range' for your―cuteness thing?"

"About 20 light-years."

"You think she could be in space?"

"It's not impossible."

PJ supposed that was true. After all, he'd been to Mars once, but that was another story.

Footsteps were coming down the hall. Marie walked in holding a large, silver tray, and announced, "Dinner's ready!"

"Oh, I got the plates!" Phineas pressed a button at the table, and moments later, a butler lined the table with plates and utensils. Marie placed the tray in the middle.

"Now we just wait for Mom," she said.

"She'll be here any minute," Phineas assured. "She had another meeting go late."

"They should just admit that 'late' is 'right on schedule' around here," sulked Marie.

At 'right on schedule,' more footsteps approached from the hall; the clacking sounds of heels this time. Soon the visage of President Isabella Flynn stepped inside. "Sorry if I made everyone wait."

"Actually, your timing was perfect." Phineas met his wife halfway across the room, and they shared a quick kiss. "Marie's pizza smells like it's hot out of the oven!"

"Dad! It was supposed to be a surprise!"

"Oh, sorry, honey. I guess the scent of pizza is just too distinguishable after Ferb went through that phase in college."

Marie moped around a moment longer next to PJ while her parents took their seats across from them. "Since you kind of ruined the big reveal, Dad, I'll just pretend like that didn't happen. I present to you..." She grasped the handle of the lid. "Pizza a la― _eek!_ "

Just as she lifted the lid, the table blew up. That was what PJ thought. After the pop and flash of yellow and red, the next thing he knew, he had pizza sauce and cheese smeared all over him.

"Oops," giggled Marie. She was likewise covered from head to toe in pizza toppings. "It exploded again!"

Phineas had been the only one to react fast enough. He had propped up his plate vertically just before impact, protecting his face from the splash zone.

Isabella was technically covered in pizza, but not in the same way as Marie and PJ. A neon green forcefield barrier had materialized into existence to surround the foot or so of space around her body, blocking any pizza chunks from reaching her. The forcefield faded away and the pizza chunks slopped to the floor around her, leaving her clean as a whistle.

"Looks like that anti-sniper forcefield you made for me works," Isabella informed her husband, while dipping a finger in cheese and inserting that finger in her mouth.

Marie looked at her parents tentatively, afraid they'd react in anger.

Rather, Phineas nodded exuberantly. "Wow, honey! Exploding pizza!? Now that's a blast from the past, I haven't seen that in years! Your cooking skills have really improved, Marie!" He went to give her a proud hug, while awkwardly trying to avoid the pizza all over her as he did so.

"Yeah, I―uh, meant to make it that way. That―was the surprise!" She gave it her best effort to roll with it and sound convincing. "Hehe, surprise?"

"Wonderful, wonderful," Phineas said, oblivious to her charade. "I'm gonna grab some napkins. You guys, dig in!"

The food was scattered all across the table and even on to the floor, so PJ wasn't sure what he was supposed to 'dig in' to. He watched the Presid―no, he had to remind himself to call her Isabella now―who managed to cut a slice out of what was left on the tray, and served himself the same way. Soon enough, Phineas was back with a plethora of napkins, and PJ wiped himself down before he started eating.

"So, how was school today?" Isabella directed at Marie once they all had their food.

"Good," she succinctly stated. "Guess what happened in band class? Bobby's internet tooth flew out while he was playing the tuba! It was hilarious, I can't wait to tell Tommy about it!"

"That reminds me." Isabella dabbed at the corners of her mouth with her napkin. "How are Ferb and 'Nessa holding up under the lawsuit?"

"They're weathering the storm like champs," answered Phineas. "I was just telling PJ about it."

"Ah, yes." Isabella turned her gaze his way. "And how about you, PJ? I know you had a good day today. My advisors tell me you ran a successful mission against the Conspirium."

"I have to give all the credit to my unit," PJ said. "And to the whatchamacallit that turns whatever it hits into a smoothie. Without that thing, we wouldn't have been able to take every person alive like we did, and we could have lost some of our own. Unfortunately though, we didn't find Suzy."

"The way I see it, we smoked her out of another hiding hole. We'll catch her, eventually."

PJ nodded. "Maybe we'll be able to get some more information from the prisoners we captured today. And as soon as we have a full analysis of what they were working on at the warehouse, we might finally know what they're planning to do next."

"Excellent. I knew I picked the right person for the job." Isabella put down her fork and looked around the table, smiling. "This is the first time we've been able to sit down for dinner together since the election, isn't it? And, of course, it's the first time since PJ joined us. It's so nice to be together like a normal, happy family. I love you all so much." She took Phineas by the hand. The couple looked deeply into each other's eyes, and PJ could feel the care they had for each other practically gushing.

"Jeez, Mom, no need to get all dramatic about it," Marie said, uncomfortable around her parents' display of affection.

"Just you wait. These little 'mom moments' will be a big deal for you too when you have a family of your own."

So this is what it's like, PJ thought to himself. Having a family. People who care about you just because you're in their lives. And not because you can hack or fight or spy or save. Something deep inside of him welled up and burst, and he suddenly cared about these people, too. Intensely. Fiercely. Indescribably. They weren't a mission to him, anymore. They were a family. They were  _his_  family. It was one of the happiest feelings he had ever had in his life. He looked down and took a large bite of food to hide an irrepressible smile from the others.

"You look like you're really enjoying your food there, PJ," Isabella pointed out.

"It beats worms and insect larvae," he replied.

"Hey, Mom," Marie blurted, "you know how Gustav is going to be on vacation Monday? Would it be okay if PJ covered the shift for him?" Gustav was Marie's regular detail. That meant on weekdays, he was her bodyguard while she attended school.

"I suppose he could," hummed Isabella, "unless he's already busy working on the Conspirium case?" She fielded the question PJ's direction.

"Our raid on the Conspirium warehouse lot today was the best lead we had on them," PJ answered. "Some of the CIA analysts think we rounded up all the Conspirium except Suzy today, but I believe we have barely scratched the surface. We still have a lot of work to do."

Marie's shoulders drooped sadly.

"But that doesn't mean they need me over there all the time," he continued. Marie perked back up. "I can delegate some of my assignments to someone and watch Marie for the day."

"Oh! Can he, Mom?"

"I don't see why not."

Marie beamed. "Yes!" she exclaimed, pumping her fist victoriously.

Soon, they finished dinner, and everyone bade each other good night. PJ accompanied Marie to her room, listening to her excitedly list all the things they could do on their day together.

"The other cool thing everyone's doing right now is the handstand challenge," she rattled off. "You can do a handstand, right? I was thinking I could do a handstand, and then you could do a handstand on my feet, so we'd be handstand stackers! How cool would that be?" She suddenly yawn deeply.

"Marie," PJ reminded her, "I'll be on the clock, we won't be able to just 'hang out.' I'll need to be in serious mode."

"You mean, 'seriously boring' mode!" She yawned again. "Do you want to sleep in my room tonight?"

"I think I'll use mine, thanks."

"Okay." She stifled a third yawn. "Good night." She opened her door.

"Good night," offered PJ.

"See you in the morning." With that, Marie closed her door. Immediately she opened it again, blushing. "Forgot to brush my teeth," she admitted as she passed PJ.

He watched her disappear into the washroom before slipping into his own bedroom just down the hall. The human-sized bed was perfectly made, and would stay that way as he curled into a ball on top of the comforter and drifted off to sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

Washington, D.C.  
September 20, 2049

"Imagine for a moment, class, that you have just invented the first time machine. What do you do? Where should you go? To the future, to see how things turn out? Or to the past, perhaps, to fix a grave mistake? Such was the question that MIT grad student Marty Emmett faced on May 17, 2043. After attending a lecture on time paradoxes given by Phineas Flynn, he went home and constructed the first working time machine―well, that we know of―certainly the first to be replicated. That day, the world was changed forever. The very  _meaning_  of history was changed forever. Suddenly, we historians could study the story of ourselves in not just one direction, but two: past, and future! Therefore, today we will be starting our unit on the history of the future."

PJ stood on a stool in the back of the classroom, garbed in the Secret Service's signature black suit and earpiece, hands clasped behind his back, keeping his eyes moving from person to person. There were about forty students arranged in neat rows in the cozy classroom. Marie sat at her desk close by, listening intently to the lecture. The teacher at the front of the room was actually a holographic projection, yet his appearance was so crisp and clear one would not have been able to tell from this far back. The other students posed very little threat, but it was his job to be wary, so PJ maintained a sharp alertness.

"Now, by show of hands, how many in this room have traveled through time?" asked the teacher, whose AI went by Mr. Mondragon.

About half of the room raised their hands. PJ didn't react, even though he belonged in the category.

"Not bad," Mr. Mondragon stated neutrally. "Why don't we take a brief sample of this class's time traveling experience. Mr. Simpson, what made you travel through time?"

A boy in one of the front rows spoke. "My family took a vacation to a hundred years in the future around three years ago. We booked a space cruise through the solar system."

"Ah, yes. The space cruising industry won't be kicking off for another six decades or so," Mr. Mondragon said. "Any others who took a vacation to the future? Let's go with you, Ms. Miller."

"My parents were visiting Hong Kong in 3366 CE when I was born," a small girl with large glasses said. "They're from our time, so they're technically 1,350 years older than me!"

A smattering of laughter reverberated through the room.

"That does sometimes happen," acknowledged Mr. Mondragon.

"My parents are from the twenty-ninth century," one boy shouted out. "They moved to this time because my dad wanted to be a welder, and in his time, that job doesn't exist."

"You will please raise your hand before speaking, Mr. Hedges," Mr. Mondragon adjured. "Although you would be correct, not very many nation's economies require metalwork in that era. Metals are too heavy for the kinds of products consumers in the 2800's use."

Another hand shot up belonging to a girl with long, sunshine-yellow hair.

"Yes, Ms. Lacroix?"

"My parents are from the 2300's, and they moved here after they were married because they loved nature. They wanted me and my brother to see what forests looked like before all the Earth's forests are replaced with digital trees. They still work in the 2300's, though, they just have to take a three-century commute every day."

"Thank you for your comments, class," Mr. Mondragon said, waving away the other hands that had gone up. "We unfortunately do not have time to hear them all today, even if we had a time machine!"

Nobody in the room laughed at his joke. As a computer program, that didn't phase him. "As you can see, time travel offers plenty of new opportunities for people. But can anybody tell me why we can only come and go from the future?"

Marie raised her hand.

"Ms. Flynn?"

"Because after Marty Emmett showcased his first time machine, laws were quickly made to ensure that nobody was allowed to go further back in the past than the date he finished his invention. If someone were to try, they might be able to alter the spacetime continuum and drastically affect the world, which would be bad."

"Very good, Ms. Flynn. I suspect you are quite aware of these things, given your mother's influence on the UN's decision to make travelling to the past illegal."

"Mm-hm!" Marie nodded.

"As a historian, I do wish we could conduct a few controlled research ventures into the past," Mr. Mondragon sighed. "For instance, an operation to recover the hundreds of thousands of lost scrolls at the library of Alexandria before Julius Caesar burned it to the ground. Or a chance to have a recorded interview with a significant religious figure, such as Jesus, Mohammed, or Buddha. But alas, it is too dangerous.

"On the other side of the coin, interaction between the present and the future suddenly opened wide. A flood of technology, resources, scientific progress, and more, will sweep over this very generation. We know that it will take some fifty years for people living from before time travel's discovery to fully acclimate to the newfound wealth of information and technology. Why, it is only because of the advances made by the great scientists of our age, Phineas and Ferb, that humanity was prepared at all for such a crossroads of trade and prosperity. We have the future given to us, and already know that in less than ten years, we will have wiped out the last of the plagues of humanity. Hunger is already gone. AIDS and Zika, gone. Malaria is almost gone. Cancer, well, there's still no one-size-fits-all solution, but for extreme cases, we can at least send them to the far future where they'll receive advanced treatment options.

"You are the generation that is witnessing the greatest period of change history will ever know. In fifty years, the flow of knowledge between present and future will have finally stabilized and plateaued. Past that, all technological advances mankind will ever know will already have been made and shared across time, thus only certain fads in lifestyle will go in and out of fashion as the centuries pile on. By 3000 CE, humans will have spread out into the Milky Way galaxy and mixed so thoroughly with alien cultures and life forms that human history as we know it will once again change, and ultimately come to an end, transitioning to a peaceful galactic federation.

"I am sure most of you will be pleased to hear that looking any further than that into the future is beyond the scope of this class. If you are interested in learning more, you can visit with me during my office hours. All you need to know for today is that we know what the future has in store for us, just as we know the past. Just like Mr. Hedge's father, time travel has made historians somewhat obsolete and a niche occupation, which is why I am not a live teacher. However, it is still as important to study history as it has ever been, if not more so. After all, who doesn't want to know the future? So let's dive into the first section of our unit, which should be an easy enough section for most of you since it covers the time period we are living in right now: 2043-2075, The Present and Future Crossroads. Let's pull up the section on our desktops now."

Every student's desk top was literally a desktop; a wide, touchscreen interactive workspace digitally recording the students' work in the teachers' systems. It held everything, from the ebooks students needed, to citation apps for help in citing references in their essays correctly, to folders for students to turn assignments in. The class all swiped around on their desktops to follow along with the lecture.

"Back to 2043 and Emmett's original invention. Emmett revealed his creation to the scientific community shortly after completing it. When word quickly spread he had created the first working time machine, he had to seek out government protection from the many businesses, corporations, even competing national governments and other factions trying to bid, buy, bribe, or even steal it from him. Most first reactions centered on how knowing the future would affect the stock market, which promptly crashed. Aid instantly arrived from the future, of course, nipping the oncoming recession in the bud. The economy was able to adapt to a broken stock exchange because investors could already know what products would be successful, rather than gamble on stocks, and we took our first steps into the new world of perfect knowledge.

"The government debate was just beginning, however. We already discussed how measures were quickly taken to prevent travelling back to the past and disrupting the timeline. These measures were spurred on by the actions of one James Ricardo Louis, who illegally obtained a time machine with the intent to go back in time and assassinate President Clayton as a baby in the 1970's. President Clayton, who was being advised by Phineas and Isabella Flynn and Ferb Fletcher, welcomed an era of prosperity and growth ushered in by the new prospects of time travel. Louis had encountered financial hardships under the micro-recession and blamed President Clayton. Fortunately, the Secret Service were able to trace Louis's movements and stop him. This event, most of all, was the final proverbial straw and the UN saw no choice but to ban all travel back to the past permanently. This law has been upheld as far into the future as we discussed earlier.

"President Clayton, of course, was able to complete his second term in office and was succeeded by President Flynn in the election of 2048, just last year."

A number of her classmates briefly glanced at Marie before turning their attention back to the instructor.

"Since we're on the subject, allow me to indulge in a brief tangent. As you all remember last year, the election process has become a little more complicated since the introduction of time travel. It is now a simple thing to find out who will ultimately win, so we ask, is there still a point to campaigns, all the polls and debates, the appearances and speeches, and everything else that goes on? Not just for the United States, but for democratic nations around the world. This past election was simple enough due to President Flynn's enormous popularity netting her an historic landslide win. There are great public fears, however, that narrower margins will upset the political climate in future elections. How should the candidates change their campaign plans if they know with certainty beforehand which way the voters are going to swing, for instance? Yet we also see that candidates will still run even knowing they are going to lose―often to make some political or moral point with their defeat. Unfortunately, we don't have time to go into the fascinating details in this class.

"There is one positive to be found in this, though: war is essentially meaningless now. Time travel lets the world see the outcome of the fighting, and opens the eyes of the warring sides to the costs going to war will exact. Additionally, using time travel to understand the underlying principles causing the beligerince of each faction allows the UN to remedy the issues before the bloodshed starts." Mr. Mondragon glanced at his watch. "Forgive me, we have to get back on track with the regular class material.

"Now then, can I ask someone to read beginning on page one-sixty-six where it starts, 'After the advent?'" Mr. Mondragon asked. "Ms. Taylor, go ahead."

"After the advent of time travel, one of the most complex social issues that arose was the treatment of human lives lost in accidents. Insurance companies battled in the courts to limit time travel after suffering huge losses when customers could simply use time travel to prevent loss of loved ones, property damages, personal injury, and more. In  _Ensurinsure V. United States_ , the Supreme Court overruled Ensurinsure's efforts to block customer cancellations or require payment for any damages averted through the use of time travel. Effectively, insurance services were no longer needed at all, a decisive blow to the industry after it was already hit hard by the rather thorough eradication of automobile accidents due to the mass-scale production of self-driving cars a decade earlier."

"It sucks for anyone who died the day before time travel was invented," interrupted a boy towards the back. A half-dozen students snickered.

As the room broke out in whispered conversations, Mr. Mondragon strictly declared, "If one more person speaks without being called on, you'll all be assigned a 200 word essay," to regain control. There was instant silence.

Another boy raised his hand. "Yes, Mr. Groves?" pointed Mr. Mondragon.

The Groves boy cleared his throat. "When my brother was getting his time machine driver's license for his job―he was delivering pizzas, and they used a time machine to go back in time and deliver the fresh-baked pizzas thirty seconds after the person ordered it―how come he didn't accidentally change the future by, like, stepping on a butterfly, causing a chain of events that would ultimately blow up the world, or something? Couldn't that happen, like, pretty much every time someone goes back in time to change something?"

Marie raised her hand.

"Ms. Flynn, perhaps you would be the most appropriate person to respond to this query," Mr. Mondragon yielded.

"My Dad and Uncle were the ones who wrote the physics books on time travel," Marie said factually. "The first theory of chronodynamics states that all outcomes must abide a self-consistent loop of narrative causality. That means that if Effect B has already happened, then changing Cause A from resulting in Effect B to resulting in Effect C triggers a loop where Effect C must also be Cause D resulting in the eventual return to the result of Effect B. In other words, it's theoretically impossible to change the future."

"Then wouldn't that mean that the people who went back in time to stop someone from dying and stuff  _wouldn't be able to stop them from dying,_  since that would be changing the future?" countered Groves.

"Not if, from a future point of view, they had already gone back to stop them from dying."

"That makes no sense!"

"Well, remember that in physics, there is no preferred frame of reference. So the narrative we see, where cause and effect flow in the direction of past to future, isn't necessarily the only frame of reference. Sometimes a frame of reference flowing in the direction from future to past paints a better picture!"

The confused look on Groves' face manifested that that didn't clear anything up for him.

"It's still just a theory, though," she added sheepishly. "For what it's worth, my Mom feels the same way you do. She believes we can control our future. That's why she led the fight to outlaw traveling back to before '43. My Dad thinks physics shows that the law is unnecessary, even though he supported her anyways since it was still a good idea in principle."

Mr. Mondragon spoke up. "Statistically, Mr. Groves, history is on Ms. Flynn's side. There have been-slash-will be millions of time jumps, and not a single one of them changes the future. If there's one thing I want you to take home from today's lesson, it's this: the future is bright and the world is safe. Crime is down to all-time lows, because law enforcement can know when and where a crime will be committed before it happens. Natural disasters, such as the next big earthquake to hit the California coastline, are known well in advance and are adequately prepared for, in many cases they can even be prevented altogether. Economic downturns are likewise planned for, often receiving additional relief sent from future points in the timeline when economies are stronger. Even consider this: you do not need to lose any sleep worrying over climate change or nuclear war as your parents and grandparents did! From studying the history of the future, we now know humanity will prevent and overcome all these crises, so do not count on any of these working as reasons not to do your homework!" A hand went up in the center of the class. "Go ahead, Ms. Mooney."

"It kind of sounds like fate," a girl with midnight-blue hair dye said, mystically. "Or destiny."

"We'll leave it to the philosophers to decide on what this all means regarding the state of our free will," Mr. Mondragon said with a shrug. At that moment, the bell rang. "In the meantime," he added quickly, "please read the rest of the chapter before our next class, and have a good day!"

PJ moved closer to Marie while the bustling students grabbed their things and exited the classroom. Marie flipped her bag over her shoulder as she stood and joined the crowd, the platypus at her side. "That was probably the best history class I've ever had," Marie said. "Isn't time travel fascinating?"

"That isn't exactly the word I would pick," he replied thoughtfully.

* * *

When school got out and Marie had finished chatting with her friends, PJ led her to a flying car with a US Government issued license plate. After they were safely inside and the vehicle's autonav had charted out its course, PJ allowed himself to relax on the comfy leather seats.

"What about you?" Marie asked him from his side. "What was it like for you?"

"What was what like for me?" he asked, having apparently missed the reference nested in her pronoun.

"Time traveling! Duh!"

"It was a job, Marie. I had to conduct myself professionally."

"What were Mom and Dad like as kids? Were they cool? Or were they―more like they are now?"

"They were―what do you mean,  _more like they are now?_ "

Marie giggled.

"Ooh, you better hope I don't tell them you said that!" PJ exclaimed. "When I went back the past to protect them from Suzy Johnson, it was just like how the stories go―Phineas and Ferb were building stuff all the time, and Isabella and Candace and Buford and Baljeet were always around helping and having fun. It was Independence Day, the day I spent with them, and they set up a swimsuit fashion show with robot versions of all the past presidents."

"That's it?" Marie asked. "No rollercoasters? No trampolines on the moon? No ice skaters or sculptures made from cotton candy or hundred-foot tall, rocket-powered swingsets?"

"I guess they didn't always make a brand new rollercoaster  _every_  day," admitted PJ.

"Weird. That's not the way Dad makes it sound."

"Well, you know how he always likes to try new things. He'd have probably gotten bored if the only things they ever built as kids were rollercoasters."

Marie nodded. "True." She turned and looked out the window. The ground was fifty feet below. Traffic zones were organized by varying levels of elevation―slower moving vehicles remained closer to the ground, faster moving zones were much higher above the city.

"What about the future?" she asked. "Have you ever been there?"

PJ shook his head. "No. There's nothing for me there." He sighed softly, then added the next part as a quiet afterthought. "No reason for me to leave this time."

Marie shot him a sideways glance. She recognized that same, lonely look on his face he used to always have. "PJ, I told you, you don't have to feel alone anymore!"

He realized he had let his emotions show through, and immediately the look was gone. "I'm fine!"

Just then, an idea hit her. Marie snapped her fingers. "I know what you need! PJ, we need to find to find you a nice platypus girlfriend!"

He looked very taken aback at that. "What? No, no!" He did not like the goofy grin she was giving him.

"Yes! That's exactly what you need!" Marie was starting to radiate excitement, ripping through her backpack and pulling out her notebook and a pencil. "Brainstorming time! PJ, what kinds of, er, platypus girls do you like?"

"None! No, we are not doing this!"

"Oh, yes we are!" Marie started scribbling furiously. "Tall ones? Short ones? Medium ones? Blue eyes? Green eyes? C'mon, PJ! You can tell me!" She poked him with her eraser.

"Stop!"

Marie paused and brought her pencil to her chin. "But where would you go to meet platypus―es? Platypi? Platy―whatever." She nibbled on her eraser in thought.

"Marie, I don't need a girlfriend!"

"I could ask Aunty Vanessa to call around the pet shops back home. There are a surprising amount of platypuses in Danville."

"Marie, listen!" PJ snatched the pencil away from her to grab her attention back. "I don't want a girlfriend, okay? It wouldn't be―kosher, I guess."

"Kosher?"

"I mean, a platypus girlfriend wouldn't be someone I could talk to or do anything with. After all, she is a platypus. They don't do much. It'd be like talking to a brick."

"I hadn't thought of it that way," Marie said.

"And while sure, everybody had a crush on Phoebe the Poodle back at OWCA Academy, that was years ago! And I didn't fit in there, either. I've never fit in anywhere except here, in this family. With you and―Mom and Dad." He felt weird calling them that. "Look, thank you for trying, but I just don't think there's someone for me out there. Not like that. It's one of the burdens of being the only talking semi-aquatic mammal in the world."

Marie knew PJ wasn't a fan of touching, so after a moment of watching him (try not to) sulk, she hesitantly put her arm around his shoulders. When he didn't resist, she let it rest there. "Okay, PJ," she said understandingly.

* * *

 _Somewhere in the Chesapeake mountains  
_ _The future..._

_The King battered his way up the overgrown path, and the platypus followed, hot on his trail. A dense patch of thick, green brush with nasty thorns caught at his robes, flaying the expensive gold threads, slowing his movement. He braced against the snag and tugged himself free, tearing his cloak in the process. Onwards he rushed, willing himself to go faster._

_Pine trees were everywhere, tall and mighty evergreens that blanketed the steep mountain banks. If his long legs were an advantage in flight, it was nullified by the slope he had to climb almost as it were a flight of stairs. Still, the crunching sounds of his pursuer seemed to fall behind. His goal lay just ahead. Only a few more bends in the path to go, if he remembered correctly. He was close, so close to reaching it―_

_The King burst into a small clearing. The grove of pine trees on the far side towered into the sky. He whipped around, still panting heavily, drawing his Glock. The platypus had to be close. Squinting down the sights, The King scanned for any signs of movement._

_The platypus darted around the final bend and into view. The King pulled the trigger, flinching as the hammer slammed down on the barrel. He had always been repulsed by the weight of the weapon and by the dirty work of killing things himself, and his lack of training showed. He missed his mark, allowing the platypus to dive behind the cover of a big pine trunk at the edge of the clearing, quite unharmed._

_Keeping the gun aimed at the base of the tree, The King backed away slowly. The platypus peeked around the left side of the trunk. He fired two more bullets into the tree to force him to retreat again behind it._

" _You know, usually, this is the part where the bad guy starts to monologue," the platypus said. "Telling me about their evil plan, about how their tragic backstory set them on a path inevitably leading them along to this very moment."_

_The King cautiously took another step back._

_The platypus peeked around the tree again. He fired one more round into the tree, but this time the platypus swooped out at unbelievable speed, close to the ground and practically on all fours. The King got off two more rounds before a beaver tail swiped across his hand, slapping the gun out of his grasp and knocking it clear across the grove._

_A barrage of punches landed on The King, packing far more power than their deceptively small fists seemed capable of unleashing. The King felt himself keel over in pain, and he face planted into the ground. He spit a clod of dirt out of his mouth while his arms were wrenched behind his back and snapped into restraints. The platypus stood on his shoulder triumphantly. "Your Conspirium is no more," he sneered._

_Only a few paces away, The King watched unnoticed, quite hidden by the trunk of another majestic pine, as his time-clone was cuffed by the platypus. His likeness was surely humiliated beyond degree, as he was led on a leash like a dog by the platypus back down the path they had just come up. Waiting until they were well out of earshot, The King finally stepped out into the clearing and approached the digital tree his other self had been striving to reach._

_He placed the palm of his hand against the bark, and the digital illusion vanished to be replaced by a biometric scanner and pale blue door. Also materializing was the outline of a tiny shed, the entrance to the Conspirium's secret underground bunker. When the scanner recognized his prints, it hissed softly and the door slid open, letting the soft glow of the interior lights shine on him. He regally paced down the steps to where his time machine awaited, stepped into its chair, and with the press of a button, he disappeared._

_He arrived back in his present. The blonde, golden curls of his first lieutenant, Suzy Johnson, were covering her face as she kneeled before him. "Welcome back, My King," she greeted. "What did you learn this time?"_

" _We are close," he said in return, emerging from the vehicle. "The final plan is nearly in place. However, the platypus is still causing us problems."_

_Suzy's reverent gaze turned into a frown as she listened to him explain what had happened._

" _I think it is time we eradicated him once and for all," The King said as he swept his flowing robes out of the way to sit down on his golden throne. "This, I leave to you."_

_Suzy bowed her head. "As you wish, My King." With that, she swiftly rose and exited the room._


	5. Chapter 5

 

Headquarters, Department of Homeland Security  
Washington, D.C.  
September 21, 2049

Every morning when he arrived at his office, PJ couldn't help but grin smugly at the knowledge that he had inherited the floorspace made vacant by the swift exit of one "Detective" Markus Douglas, the Conspirium's mole in the Department of Homeland Security, and the man who interrogated him when Suzy tricked the CIA into arresting him earlier that summer. Douglas apparently had quietly slipped away along with Suzy when PJ revealed the Conspirium's presence to the world. As with Suzy, his current whereabouts were unknown, although PJ hoped he wounded up getting eaten by a shark, or something.

Taking his seat, PJ flicked on his computer screen and laid his paw against the security panel to confirm his identification. After a brief scan, the monitor blinked and began to glow in the green colors of his homescreen. He tapped an app on the screen to bring up the newsfeed and scanned some of the morning's headlines.

" _Country's last 'drive-thru' supermarket in Waco, TX closes its lanes."_

" _Anthropomorphic hedgehog robs convenience store, outruns police drones."_

" _Geneva protest against pollution produced from time machine radiation gains steam."_

" _Robbie Grayson, country singer and superstar, shaves beard, donates it."_

" _President Flynn congratulates, offers support to Fireside girl who earned 100 patches while fighting cancer."_

" _More controversy surrounding NFL androids using performance-enhancing polymers."_

" _Recall issued for vegan bacon, shortage leads many to time jump to next month."_

In PJ's experience, people could generally be split into three groups. There were those who didn't check the news anymore―a large portion of this demographic included the millions of people who spent the majority of their lives in the virtual reality of their Experience Wall. Then there were those who mainly viewed news broadcasts concerning future dates, since major networks now had a catalogue of all their coverage of every day's news posted many hundreds of years into the future, a massive database of information that could be perused online. And finally there were those few traditionalist souls who still watched today's newscasts, as if they wanted to avoid any spoilers about the future. PJ considered himself a realist, so he would both catch up on today's news and get a few days ahead when appropriate and as the need for certain specific information required. If only finding Suzy Johnson were so easy as checking the future news, but somehow she had managed to disappear completely from the timeline. Even with access to time travel, the news still wasn't perfect.

The hedgehog headline interested PJ enough to swipe it past the right side of his screen. The Experience Wall to his right immediately jumped to life and played the video hologram recordings for the story.

"Last night, a convenience store in Sacramento was robbed by an anthropomorphic hedgehog," an attractive reporter named Kathy Thorne explained. "Witnesses say that although police forces sent drones back in time to catch the crook in the act, the drones―which were manufactured to confront and incapacitate human lawbreakers―proved insufficient to handle a much smaller, more agile type of criminal."

"It was like watching a brick try to catch a cheetah," a witness told the microphone that was being held to their chin.

"These talking, anthropomorphic animals are living on the streets," said another, "and they don't have any education, they don't have jobs, and so they turn to crime. It's just sad."

"It's times like these that I am grateful there are no anthropomorphic animals living in my community," said a third witness.

The reporter returned to occupy the fullness of the 3D projection. "Fortunately, no one was hurt, and the only―"

PJ had silenced the broadcast with an angry snap of his fingers. "Stupid people," he growled, "did it ever occur to you that maybe we can't get any jobs because of  _your_  discriminating, egotistical, condescending―"

There was a knock on his door, cutting PJ off before he could cuss.

He took a deep breath. "Come in."

Eliot walked in. "Hey boss," he said. "Here's the completed file report on all the Conspirium prisoners we captured and on all the evidence that we impounded from Friday's raid on the warehouse." He tapped a cube onto PJ's desk. PJ motioned a swipe from his monitor to the cube, and it instantly began downloading the data.

"Thanks."

"While you were out yesterday, we also made the last of the prisoner interrogations."

"How'd it go? Wait, let me guess. Nobody talked."

Eliot nodded. "You got it. These Conspirium chumps are hard as steel to break. Literally. I mean, not  _literally,_  but, you know what I mean."

PJ sighed. Before the raid on the compound last week, they had managed to capture a handful of Conspirium spies, including a highly publicized affair last month where they arrested the newly inducted Supreme Court justice. (Justice Bensen had been appointed by President Flynn herself, under the influence of Suzy Johnson it had turned out, shocking the nation.) Once arrested, it was always the same. They never spoke a word about the Conspirium's plans, having sworn a secret oath to never reveal them to the United States government. Nobody on PJ's force, or anywhere else in the CIA, FBI, or Department of Homeland Security, had been able to get anything out of them.

"You ever see those old movies where they use the whole 'good cop, bad cop' routine? I wish we could do something like that," Eliot offered. "You'd be the good cop, and then  _I'd_  be the bad cop. Smashing noses, busting chairs, doing the thing where you go, ' _Hiahh!'_  And then they go, ' _Wyeeeh!'_  And then you go, ' _Hrogh!'_ " Eliot gesticulated with some elaborate fist movements to demonstrate.

PJ wasn't listening. He was scanning the files he had just downloaded, and something had caught his eye. "Eliot," he said, interrupting his agent's little spree of violence, "what about this one?" He pointed at the screen.

Eliot came around his desk to look. "That's the ugly booger I caught with his pants down. Literally!"

"His polygraph scanners show his blood pressure and perspiration rates were higher than the others'," PJ said.

"Hmm, yeah, I guess they were," Eliot agreed. "Still, he didn't say a word during the entire interrogation, just like the others."

"I know, but he may be the closest to breaking. It looks like he might crack under just a little more pressure." PJ started for the door. "Let's sit this guy back down in the hot seat."

"Already on it, boss," replied Elliot, pressing a finger against his earpiece.

* * *

"Stacey Galvin, white male, 23 years old, 5'10", 151 lbs," PJ muttered, reading the prisoner's file. Galvin could be seen through the one-way window sitting alone, staring at his hands, which were resting on the table. PJ was reviewing all their intel as well as the recordings from Galvin's previous interrogation. Ramirez had joined PJ and Eliot in the viewing room to watch. "Lives in Albany. Was bullied a lot in middle and high school," he continued, "only job history is a string of short-lived minimum wage gigs, all of which he quit or was fired from in a matter of weeks."

"Spends most of his time in virtual reality," Ramirez finished for him. "Most of his digital transactions are for first-person shooters. We think that's where he was recruited by the Conspirium―online."

"And he has irritable bowel syndrome," snickered Eliot.

"Grow up," interjected Ramirez.

"How long ago was his last questioning?" PJ asked Ramirez.

"It was yesterday morning, around 11 o'clock."

"Think he's had enough time to simmer?"

All three looked at the prisoner. His complexion was pale and he had a thin frame. His curly, greasy brown hair looked like it hadn't been washed or trimmed in a while. "He looks like he's already starting to sweat," decided Eliot. "Want me to have a go at him?"

PJ waited a full five seconds before he nodded. "Okay, Eliot, but we are not doing the 'good cop, bad cop' routine."

"C'mon, boss, you can trust me!"

PJ and Ramirez watched Eliot let himself in the room through the one-way window. Galvin didn't even glance up.

Rather than take a seat in the empty chair across from Galvin, Eliot sat on the corner of the metal table with a leg hanging over the edge and the other foot on the ground, slightly intruding on Galvin's personal space. "So, Mr. Galvin, I am Jonathan Eliot. Wait―is that right? Galvin? That's a weird name, do you mind if I just call you Stacey? Huh, Stacey?"

Ramirez groaned at PJ's side and started to rub her temple.

Eliot stood and started to pace. "Well, Stacey, before we get started here, I just gotta ask, just one thing. Do you think these shoes bring out my eyes very well? I mean, I'm just asking, one guy to another, one bro to another, because I kind of like the mahogany inseams, but the black leather vamps are supposed to be shined, and I sort of think they'd look good with a little more wear, you know?"

"What is he doing?" Ramirez whispered sharply.

Galvin, for the first time, lifted his eyes from the table to give Eliot a very weird look.

"Sorry, it's just that I'm gay," Eliot said, "so, you know, stereotypes. I like outfits and shoes and stuff. But that's neither here nor there. Anyways…" Eliot waved his hand nonchalantly and sat in the empty seat. "The Conspirium. They're some naughty, naughty people, Stacey. And they are where we found you. So that makes you a naughty boy, Stacey. Yes, very naughty." He was leaning in uncomfortably close.

"Oh my gosh, this is so embarrassing," Ramirez said. "Eliot is such an idiot. Why is he pretending to be gay?"

At that point, Eliot leaned back, away from Galvin, and crossed his legs in front of himself. "You know, Stacey, I've been reading your file, and I feel like we have a connection. You may not feel it yet, but I do. That's why I want what's best for you. And right now, what's best for you is to tell me what you know about the Conspirium." Eliot started to lean in close again. "C'mon, Stacey, you can tell me."

Galvin still had not said a word, but PJ noticed his face was starting to turn red.

"Oh my gosh," Ramirez whispered again, this time, with noticeably more awe. "Eliot is an idiot, but it's working!"

"C'mon, Stacey," Eliot continued to soothe. "Stacey, Stacey, Stacey…"

"STOP CALLING ME THAT!" Galvin exploded.

Eliot didn't seem to flinch under the glare Galvin gave him. PJ and Ramirez glanced at each other.

"What would you like me to call you, then?" Eliot asked, politely.

Galvin was breathing heavily from his outburst and broke eye contact first. "Stacey is a girl's name," he finally uttered. "I only go by 'darkxkillerangel,' my Wallname."

Eliot leaned back and clasped his hands on the table in front of him, looking serious. "darkxkillerangel, then, are you going to tell me what I want to know?"

Galvin shook his head. Eliot stood up. "Why don't I give you some time to think about it?" With that, he turned and paced out the door.

Two seconds later, he slung his way back into the viewing room. "And the award goes to―" he said, raised both arms in the air, and followed up his sentence fragment with a chorus of mock cheering and whistling. Ramirez groaned, and Eliot positioned his body in front of hers before he began to dance in place energetically.

"Yeah, good job, you proved you really can annoy anyone," Ramirez barked, shoving him bodily away when his gyrating got too close to her. "And for the record, if you think that's how gay men act, you are way off."

"Get a hold of yourself, girl!" he answered, recovering his balance. "There is plenty of the Great Jonny Eliot to go around!" He winked at her before taking a seat, leaning back and resting the back of his head against his interlocked fingers. "I could tell just by looking at him that he's homophobic. And it worked!"

"Don't celebrate too much yet," PJ commanded. "We got him to speak, but we still don't have any new information on the Conspirium or Suzy Johnson."

"Relax, we got this in the bag! I have an idea, boss, and if we can pull it off, we'll have this kid spilling the beans like a tiny little chihuahua biting into a Schlocko's Tacos gargantuan burrito. Literally!"

"And what is your plan?"

Eliot grinned.

* * *

"No! No! I am not doing that!"

"Aw, c'mon, boss!" Eliot protested. "This kid's a real entitled punk! Going around, asking everyone to call him ' _dork's killer angel,'_  his Experience Wall gamer name? He's probably spent so much time in virtual reality he literally thinks half the games he plays are real life!"

"Look, you can go and embarrass yourself, pretending to be gay to freak him out, but I will not be joining in on the self-embarrassment ride today!"

"You won't embarrass yourself! You'll be a bad-a―" Eliot glanced at Ramirez and checked his language. "―I mean, the bad cop! It'll be great! Let's scare him so much we make him pee his pants!"

"No, Eliot, I am not doing this! No way!"

* * *

"This is so stupid," PJ muttered to himself, as he clambered into the cage.

"You'll do great!" Eliot reassured him. "Just act really crazy and be as frightening as you can."

Eliot pushed the cart PJ's cage was loaded on up to the door, opened it, and entered. Galvin looked up immediately this time.

PJ hurriedly got down on all fours, crossed his eyes, furrowed his brows, and started to spin in slow circles inside his cage, as if looking for something. Like maybe his sanity.

"What is that thing?" Galvin asked, scooting back in his chair.

"That," Eliot said proudly, "is a rabid platypus."

"Look, I don't know anything, all right?"

Eliot ignored that. "Did you know that if left untreated, rabies is the most deadly virus on the planet? If the infected isn't vaccinated quickly, the fatality rate is over 99.9%." He lifted the cage off the cart and set it, including PJ, on the table. Galvin was leaning as far back as he could. "The most recognizable symptom in rabid animals is, of course, the drooling."

PJ started drooling on cue.

"Other signs an animal is rabid include aggression and hyperactivity," explained Eliot. PJ started gnawing on a bar to keep up the act. The metallic taste wasn't unpleasant, even if it was a little gross.

"Have you ever wondered why rabies makes them drool?" Eliot asked. "The rabies virus attacks the brain's network of neurons, imbedding a fear of water into the host so deeply that it won't even swallow its own saliva. It's an evolutionary mechanism, on behalf of the virus. Rabies propagates in the salivary glands, making the most convenient way of transmitting the disease through biting and getting its saliva into the bloodstream."

The color had drained out of Galvin's face. "Please, get that thing out of here! I don't know what the Conspirium is planning! I don't know where Suzy Johnson is!"

"But the virus will kill the host mammal before it dies of dehydration," concluded Eliot, as if Galvin were not there. "After the onset of symptoms, even vaccination has no effect, and the host almost always dies. So for the virus to spread, the animal has a limited time to find another victim to bite. It's nature's ticking clock."

PJ lunged at the side of the cage closest to Galvin, rattling the table.

"I swear, I can't tell you anything, I swear!" Galvin was straining at the handcuffs holding him to the table. "Please! No, don't!"

Eliot reached for the pin lock. Galvin was screaming bloody murder.

"NO! DON'T! I'll tell you, alright! I'll tell you!"

Holding back a smirk, Eliot paused with his hand on the lock, and gave Galvin his undivided attention.

Galvin's face shone under a layer of sweat. "Suzy Johnson came and visited the warehouse a couple of days before you guys found us. I overheard her talking about something, I can't remember what, though—"

Eliot rotated his eyes back towards the cage door.

"Wait, no, it's coming!" Galvin squealed. "It was, um, something about—come on, think! She said—Cincinnati! Yes, that was it! Something about Cincinnati, and a club, and a gala!"

"Is Suzy Johnson in Cincinnati?" Eliot asked.

"I don't know, I swear!"

Eliot looked the prisoner over once more. Then, he pulled the pin completely out.

PJ flew out of the cage at Galvin, who was screaming. PJ grabbed him by the collar. After a delay, Galvin realized he hadn't been bitten yet, and timidly silenced his scream. PJ looked him in the eyes, his beak almost touching Galvin's nose. "Thank you," the platypus said simply, releasing his collar.

Galvin stared incredulously before his eyes glossed over and his head flopped back against the chair. He had fainted.

* * *

"That was awesome!" Eliot roared exuberantly once they were back outside the interrogation room. "Did you see that, Ramirez? I think we actually did make the guy pee his pants!"

Ramirez had just exited the viewing room to join them. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm actually impressed, Eliot. Where did you learn so much about rabies?"

"You don't know everything about me," he replied.

"Alright, let's focus, people," PJ said, directing the two down the hall. "I want the city of Cincinnati searched for any signs of Suzy Johnson. Check everything we can: traffic recordings, audio command logs, e-credit transactions, you know the drill. Check clubs and bars first. If they even have just a security camera, I want that footage scanned!"

"Yes, sir!"

"And find out what galas are being held in the area," PJ added. "If Suzy Johnson shows her face anywhere, I want us to be there yesterday!"

"Literally!" Eliot exclaimed.

* * *

Dee, Struct, and Ives LLC Law Firm  
St. Louis, Missouri  
September 21, 2049

The vast conference room located on the 39th floor of the third-tallest building in St. Louis overlooks the mighty Mississippi River and the iconic Gateway Arch the city is known for. Its east-facing, four-inch thick windows stretch nearly floor to ceiling, offering some of the best views money can buy as a backdrop when the rich and powerful meet there to discuss business.

At first, the room was empty, until all at once a door opened and it filled with people. There was not a lot of talking—most noises were the scraping of chair wheels on carpet, the shuffling of coats and electronics, the occasional cough or clearing of the throat. Most of the occupants were dressed in business suits. Some were more casual.

The final person to enter the conference room was The King. His robes were cinnamon-red velvet and dangled to just above the floor. The King took his seat at the head of the table, and Suzy Johnson sat at his right hand. Immediately, all eyes were on him.

"Welcome, ladies and gentlemen," he began. "Before we start, we should like to recognize our newest member: Zekiel, welcome to the Conspirium." The King locked eyes with a black man at the end of the table. The man wore the most casual clothes out of everyone in the room, consisting of a baseball cap, multiple piercings, dark jeans, and a sleeveless shirt that showed off his muscular arms, which were covered in tattoos. Zekiel nodded in return.

"Zekiel is the leader of the largest gang on the West Coast, and has contributed a substantial sum to our cause," summarized The King. "Antonio, I expect the two of you to cooperate, as we are all family here."

The most feared mafia leader in the entire Eastern Seaboard, Antonio, dressed in an expensive suit, extracted his cigar from his mouth. "If you say 'e's family, 'e's family. Welcome, brothuh."

Zekiel huffed back.

"Excellent," motioned The King. "Now then, to business! We are days away from commencing operations on Phase One. Senator Cash, how do our supporters in Congress look?"

"I have made a deal with Senator Delitzsch, a compromise of sorts, and in return for my favor, his vote will swing three other senators, ensuring the legislation will have a majority."

"Excellent," repeated The King. "David, what do you have to report?"

"The bombs are ready," said a short, balding man with thick glasses. "Antonio's crew are handling the logistics, and providing the ICBMs. They will be ready to fire at your command."

"Then it appears we have everything in place," noted The King. "Our media contact, Shawn Wisksfromaneyebrow, is likewise prepared to sway public opinion in favor of the Conspirium. Only one final piece has yet to be put in place. Zekiel, that will be your job."

"Name it."

"You have a talent for sparking anarchy. I need you to do this on the biggest scale of all: Washington D.C. With your help, we are going to topple this nation's government."

Zekiel sat up straighter. "Sounds like I'm your guy."

Satisfied, The King smiled. "Antonio will bring you up to speed on the details. As for the rest of you," The King's emerald green eyes swept across the room, "you all know what you have to do. Once America has fallen, I will become King, and you will all have your seats as governors and judges over your parcels of the continent, ruling under my authority. We will have our rights restored, and our destinies will finally be fulfilled. To the Conspirium!" He raised the diamond and emerald studded scepter held in his right hand.

"The Conspirium!" A chorus rang around the table. With that, everyone stood to leave.

"Antonio," The King asked, and the mob boss waited behind until the room emptied. "Do you have a couple of men to spare?"

"Of course," he replied.

"Suzy here has need of a few—what did you call them?"

"Meatheads," said Suzy.

"Forgive my asking, ma'am, but what do you need 'em for?"

Suzy wore a distant look. "Let me answer that by asking you a question. How do you kill someone for good, someone very important, if someone can always just travel back in time to save them?"

Antonio didn't have a quick answer. "If only I knew."

The dark look that crossed the face of Suzy Johnson gave him the willies.

* * *

Headquarters, Department of Homeland Security  
Washington, D.C.  
September 21, 2049

"Hey Boss, you should take a look at this," Tui hollered from across the office. PJ's entire team had been been searching for any tips or leads on Suzy Johnson in Cincinnati since morning, and so far, they had turned up nothing.

PJ pattered over to Tui's desk. "What is it?"

"I think we've been looking in the wrong place this whole time." Tui rolled back his chair and swiveled the monitor to project PJ's way.

It displayed an announcement card written in bright, bold lettering. PJ read the large print.

_To celebrate the new discovery of an original letter written by the hand of George Washington, the Cincinnati Society will be holding this year's gala in the Capitol Building, Auditorium C, on September 25, 2049. Dinner will be at 7 p.m., the unveiling of the letter is at 8._

"This clipping was in last week's news," Tui explained.

"What is the Cincinnati Society?" PJ asked.

Tui typed a few keys. "Some sort of secret society, I guess. Dedicated to preserving the principles of, and public interest in, the Revolutionary War. Membership is hereditary and patriarchal."

By now, the rest of the team were all crowding up to the screen. "Not another blasted secret society," whined Eliot.

"Okay," said PJ, "but what connection does Suzy Johnson have to the Cincinnati Society?"

"I think I know." Tui hit another key. The screen scrolled down. PJ read along on the monitor as Tui read it out loud for the others. "Several members of Congress will be in attendance at the gala, and President Isabella Flynn will be attending as a special guest speaker."

PJ cursed under his breath. "Suzy is planning another attack on President Flynn!"


	6. Chapter 6

_Somewhere in the Chesapeake mountains  
_ _The future..._

_The King battered his way up the overgrown path, and the platypus followed, hot on his trail. A dense patch of thick, green brush with nasty thorns caught at his robes, flaying the expensive gold threads, slowing his movement. He braced against the snag and tugged himself free, tearing his cloak in the process. Onwards he rushed, willing himself to go faster._

_Pine trees were everywhere, tall and mighty evergreens that blanketed the steep mountain banks. If his long legs were an advantage in flight, it was nullified by the slope he had to climb almost as it were a flight of stairs. Still, the crunching sounds of his pursuer seemed to fall behind. His goal lay just ahead. Only a few more bends in the path to go, if he remembered correctly. He was close, so close to reaching it―_

_The King burst into a small clearing. The grove of pine trees on the far side towered into the sky. He whipped around, still panting heavily, drawing his Glock. The platypus had to be close. Squinting down the sights, The King scanned for any signs of movement._

_The platypus darted around the final bend and into view. The King pulled the trigger, flinching as the hammer slammed down on the barrel. He had always been repulsed by the weight of the weapon and by the dirty work of killing things himself, and his lack of training showed. He missed his mark, allowing the platypus to dive behind the cover of a big pine trunk at the edge of the clearing, quite unharmed._

_Keeping the gun aimed at the base of the tree, The King backed away slowly. The platypus peeked around the left side of the trunk. He fired two more bullets into the tree to force him to retreat again behind it._

" _You know, usually, this is the part where the bad guy starts to monologue," the platypus said. "Telling me about their evil plan, about how their tragic backstory set them on a path inevitably leading them along to this very moment."_

_The King cautiously took another step back._

_The platypus peeked around the tree again. He fired one more round into the tree, but this time the platypus swooped out at unbelievable speed, close to the ground and practically on all fours. The King got off two more rounds before a beaver tail swiped across his hand, slapping the gun out of his grasp and knocking it clear across the grove._

_This time, The King was ready. He ducked down and used his long legs to sweep the platypus' webbed feet out from under him, sending him tumbling to the ground. He tried to kick the animal, but missed as he rolled out of reach. The platypus pushed himself up and charged again, aiming a blow at The King's sternum. The King was too slow to dodge, absorbing the full force of the blow and knocking him back on his heels._

_The platypus leapt in the air to deliver a vicious kick, and The King was just able to get his bearings in time to duck. He spotted the conveniently located branch just within reach, and snatched it as the platypus turned to face him once more._

_Lifting the branch to strike, The King swung mightily at his foe. The platypus sidestepped to dodge the attack. Moving the more quickly, the platypus was able to leap on top of the branch and pin it beneath his weight, leaving The King without a weapon._

_A barrage of punches landed on The King, packing far more power than their deceptively small fists seemed capable of unleashing. The King felt himself keel over in pain to face plant into the ground, making him spit dirt out of his mouth while his arms were craned behind his back and snapped into restraints. The platypus stood on his shoulder triumphantly. "Your Conspirium is no more," he sneered._

_Only a few paces away, The King watched unnoticed, quite hidden by the trunk of another majestic pine, as his time-clone was cuffed by the platypus. It was clear to him that no matter how many notes he took or how many times he watched his opponent's moves, he simply couldn't match the platypus head-to-head in a fight._

* * *

United States Capitol Building  
Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C.  
September 25, 2049

"I still think this is a bad idea!" PJ repeated, exasperated.

"PJ, I am not canceling my speech at the gala tonight, and that's final!"

PJ shook his head angrily. Isabella could be so stubborn sometimes. For as long as he had been on the Secret Service, he'd had to deal with it.

"Look, PJ," Phineas said, "we'll have the Secret Service, you, and your team there, plus Ferb and I have taken every technological precaution we can think of to make sure Isabella is safe."

"And if anything goes wrong," interjected Isabella, "we can always use time travel to go back and warn ourselves of what Suzy is planning. Our future selves haven't appeared to do so yet, so chances are it's nothing we can't handle."

Taking a deep breath, PJ sighed. "The President of the United States always gets what she wants."

"Yes. Yes, she does." Phineas and Isabella intoned in unison.

"Jynx! You owe me a soda!" exclaimed Phineas.

Ignoring her husband, the President added, "Besides, we've been waiting for months for Suzy to show herself. This is a risk worth taking if it means we can flush her out."

"Okay," PJ had reluctantly agreed. That was how it happened this morning. Now, as he waited in a saferoom inside the Capitol Building with Isabella, Phineas, Ferb, and Vanessa, he was still on edge.

He reminded himself that at least Marie was safe back at the White House. While Ferb and Vanessa had teleported up to attend the gala, Thomas and Marie were having a movie night, watching  _2001: A Space Odyssey,_  if PJ remembered correctly. He didn't care for those really old movies, but Marie loved the science in this one, and Thomas apparently tolerated it, for the musical score, PJ guessed.

Deciding he needed to get rid of some nervous energy, PJ left the room to go check on the patrol schedule for the hundredth time. Coombs and Lee were working surveillance and running face-recognition algorithms to find Suzy faster. Willy and Tui were backup for the security detail and the bouncer. Olsen and Waters were undercover as attendees, the eyes on the ground, as it were; and Ramirez and Eliot were out in the camouflage van, reading satellite images off of thermal scans. PJ didn't trust Eliot not to draw too much attention to himself if he were working inside.

PJ also knew most of the folks on the unit dispatched by the Secret Service tonight, many of them his former coworkers. They had a perimeter of strong men with sharp eyes, highly trained, surrounding the convention hall. They were trained to notice movement, especially of peoples' hands, and to react quickly to potential threats. Isabella's top personal bodyguard was never more than a few feet away whenever she was out in public, a mountain of a man who wore over 25 pounds of kevlar armor under his suit so he could use his body as a shield if the need arose.

There was less than twenty minutes left until dinner would be served. The food was inspected thoroughly for safety and the President's dish was prepared under scrupulous supervision. At precisely two minutes before 7 o'clock, Phineas and Isabella would emerge from the saferoom they were waiting in, to be seated at their table on the hour, exactly. All the men and women protecting Isabella were well armed and well trained. PJ tried his best to relax and focus.

His job was perhaps a bit redundant, yet he had insisted on it. He had reserved himself a seat at the President's table, where he wanted to watch everything that was going on around her. He would be the last line of defense, alongside her personal bodyguards, who would be standing a short distance away. When there were five minutes left before they were to be seated, PJ returned to the waiting room. Isabella's sheer black gown was beautiful, and she wore a pearl necklace. Vanessa was no less stunning in a black dress and fur coat. Phineas and Ferb were each fitted in a modest tux. PJ wore the signature black suit of the Secret Service, but he took out the earpiece so he would look like he were simply wearing a tux at the table.

At last, it was time to go. They were led by Isabella's bodyguards through the wide double doors, gilded with silver and gold enameling, to the auditorium. The large banquet hall was decorated with gold banners draped across the walls, and a dazzling chandelier the size of an elephant lit the room high above. As many as four dozen round tables, seating up to six persons each, were arranged so compactly they were barely navigable. The largest banner at the front of the room read, " _Omnia Reliquit Servare Republicam."_  As they entered, the crowd respectfully rose to their feet and waited until Isabella had taken her seat. Phineas sat next to his wife, while Ferb and Vanessa chose spots opposite them at the circular table. Perry sat to Phineas' other side, in the chair that had a booster seat already waiting for him. One other chair at the table remained unoccupied.

A speaker approached the microphone at the front of the room. "Welcome, everyone," he said, beaming brightly. "I know we're all eager to eat, so let's make this quick! Lance Quail will offer the invocation. Dinner will be served as quickly as our chefs are physically capable; plates will be taken at quarter-till. At 8 o'clock, we will be pleased to hear some brief remarks from the President of the Society of the Cincinnati, Kyle Konig. After which, we will hear from the President of the United States of America, Isabella Flynn. She will be followed by the unsealing of the George Washington letter which was discovered by one of our members, Darren O'Neil, last month. The benediction will be given by Frank Henderson. Finally, we want to take a moment to give a big thanks to you all for coming, and especially to all the people who have worked so hard to make this gala possible. Thank you."

The conductor stepped down and after a brief spout of polite applause, an opening prayer was offered. PJ kept his eyes open and vigilant, no disrespect meant to any higher powers. After the invocation, the food began to be brought out, and a general background din of chatter and clanking silverware slowly grew to fill the room.

"Ferb, 'Nessa!" Isabella addressed, as a waiter lowered a dish in front of her first. "Thanks again for coming!"

Ferb merely nodded. Vanessa spoke. "Sure, it's always nice to get away for a bit."

The rest of the table was now being served. "By the way, how's your father doing, 'Nessa?" asked Isabella.

"Dad's still kicking," Vanessa half-grinned, half-grimaced while she poked a spear of asparagus with her fork. "The nursing home says his kicking problem is getting better, though. He isn't trying to kick every wall, table, or chair he sees, anymore."

"I—must not remember. Where did he pick up his kicking problem again?"

Vanessa sighed. "When he was a small boy back in Gimmelstump, his mother's love was always inexplicably linked to kickball, and even though she passed away years ago, he's still trying to 'kick his way right into her heart,'" she recited, as if from memory after hearing it so many times.

"Aww!" Isabella placed a hand over her chest. "Like the Love Händel song? That's so sweet!"

"Yeah, I guess it is, in my father's own weird, twisted way..." Vanessa drifted off. "His dementia could have taken worse forms."

"Are you still staying in touch with Candace?" Phineas asked.

"Yeah. Jeremy and she are doing fine. They of course just got back from celebrating their thirty-first in the Bahamas. Jeremy seems to be taking the news that his sister turned out to be a traitorous, time-travelling assassin petty well, at least."

"Well, that's good," Phineas said, jovially. "We haven't had a chance to catch up with them since last Christmas."

PJ was the final one to be served. He only half-listened to the conversation, focusing on paying attention to his surroundings. He kept a watchful eye on everything going on in the room, from the people at the neighboring tables to the movement of the waiters and waitresses to the flow of guests in and out the doors at the main entrance. He caught the eye of Coombs a few tables away, who sent him a curt 'so far, so good' nod. Meanwhile, the empty seat next to PJ had also been served a plate of steaming hot food, and he wondered where their host, Kyle Konig, the President of the Cincinnati Society, was.

* * *

A few minutes after dinner had been served, PJ saw an overweight man with a round face and a salt-and-pepper beard and mustache approach the table. In his tweed jacket that mismatched the color of his slacks, he reminded PJ of a college professor. PJ tensed as the man shuffled his way through the tight spaces between tables towards them.

"Ah, Phineas Flynn, what a coincidence seeing you here!" he said once he reached the space behind the empty chair.

Phineas' eyes darted up to see who spoke. "Dr. Turnstead! Oh, good to see you!" He rose to his feet to shake his hand. "And you remember my wife, Isabella?"

"How could I ever forget?" smiled Dr. Turnstead, shaking hands with her in turn. "And I assume this is Ferb Fletcher?"

"Yep, that's my brother and his wife, Vanessa."

"Splendid to meet you, I've heard so much about you!"

"And this is PJ the platypus. Dr. Turnstead was my research advisor as an undergrad," explained Phineas. "This man is a genius!"

"Hardly," Dr. Turnstead humbly shook off. "My greatest contribution to science was having the lucky draw of mentoring a student who went on to receive five Nobel prizes by his forty-fourth birthday."

"But only three of them were in physics," Phineas clarified.

The professor took the empty seat, and PJ forced himself to relax next to the intruder. "If I may, I wanted to ask your opinion on some of my latest research," he stated, "and Mr. Fletcher, I'd appreciate your input on this subject as well."

"Sure," Phineas quickly agreed, "what have you got for us?"

"I have been experimenting with mixing Pizzazium Infinionite with Cutetonium under high pressure isothermal conditions, resulting in a plasma-state substance that gives off large amounts of energy but produces less than a trillionth of a Becquerel of dangerous radiation." Dr. Turnstead was making circuitous shapes with his hands.

Phineas' eyes widened. "That sounds like it could work as an alternative time machine fuel source!"

His former teacher nodded. "That's the idea. It could eliminate time machine radiation pollution. However, the problem is that the reaction is only spontaneous at extremely high temperatures, on the order of a million degrees Fahrenheit. That doesn't make it too viable as a fuel source."

Phineas put his hand to his chin in thought. "And I assume you tried putting the reactants under pressure to decrease the temp threshold?"

"Yes, that was our first idea. At around ten thousand kilobars, the reaction point drops down to only one hundred thousand degrees."

Phineas clicked his tongue. "Hm, that isn't much of an improvement. Ferb, do you have any ideas?"

The green-haired Brit shrugged his shoulders.

"Our best bet at this point is finding a potential catalyst that doesn't react with the cutetonium, causing it to―"

"Causing it to decay into its constituent parts of cuteacetic acid and cesium triphosphate," Phineas finished for him. "Yeah, that would be bad."

"You can appreciate that my lab doesn't feel like financing a thousand different trials that could all end in an explosion big enough to demolish the science building at Tri-State State, just to find a working catalyst." Dr. Turnstead guffawed loudly. "And it goes without saying that Pizzazium Infinionite is too scarce to ever truly replace our current fuels, so with all pretense of practicality lost, the experiment will be shut down if we can't find another solution soon."

"You could ask Baljeet if he could run catalyst simulations on his quantum computer," Isabella suggested. "His models were able to predict the behavior of the supercritical neutron soup in the cores of white dwarfs."

"Isabella, that's a great idea!" Phineas turned to beam proudly at his wife. "Yes, Dr. Turnstead, I could hook you up with our good friend, Dr. Baljeet!"

The professor was impressed. "Madame President, I had no idea you were so intimately familiar with cutting-edge science!"

"Most people don't realize that I triple-majored in chemistry and biology along with political science," she grinned.

Dr. Turnstead stroked his beard between his thumb and forefinger. "If you don't mind my asking, with such a scientific background, what made you push for the legislation against time traveling to the past, to before 2043?"

"Just in case," she dodged coyly.

* * *

"How  _do_  you kill somebody if someone can just go back in time to save them?" asked Meathead #1. Suzy didn't care enough to even try to remember their names, not when all three of the men walking behind her equally stupid, muscular, and ugly.

"The same way you kill someone as always, while making sure nobody actually  _does_ go back in time to save them," she said over her shoulder.

"But this is the freaking President of the United States we're talking about here!" Meathead #2 keenly pointed out. "Doesn't the President have a whole bunch of people who are paid to do that kind of stuff?"

* * *

"Aba―" stammered Dr. Turnstead, taken aback by Isabella's firm response. "I daresay, I hardly need to remind you that it was―" he gestured between Phineas and Ferb, "―these two who discovered the first three Laws of Chronodynamics."

"The first three  _theories_  of chronodynamics," Isabella corrected. "They haven't been proven."

Phineas held out his spoon to interrupt. "Isabella and I have talked about this a hundred times, Dr. Turnstead, and it's really just best if we―"

"All outcomes must abide a self-consistent loop of narrative causality," he quoted over Phineas. "Hundreds of peer reviewed studies show this to be the case, again and again and again. The flow of nature has a very defined chronological structure that we can't seem to permanently change, no matter what choices we go back and alter."

"And what is it, Dr. Turnstead, that you want to go back in time before 2043 so badly to do?" Isabella asked.

* * *

"Yeah," said Meathead #1. "The Secret Service has a whole armada of time machines. They'll send somebody back to stop us, zip, zap, zoop."

"They won't," Suzy stated, "because my strategy has all the subtlety of a mosquito."

"What does 'subtlety' mean?"

"It means they won't even know we were ever there."

* * *

"Well, for me personally," said Dr. Turnstead carefully, "even with all the scientific progress we have made and will make in the future, there are still some puzzles that science hasn't solved. If it were up to me, I would use a time machine to get all of history's greatest scientific geniuses and inventors together in one room and see if they can crack some of them. Guys like Leonardo Da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Galileo, Einstein, Phineas and Ferb, you get the idea."

"Scientific problems like what?"

"Well, wormhole stabilization, for instance. We still don't know what happens inside of black holes. We still don't know what caused the Big Bang, either. We may never know, but assembling the A-listers of humanity's all-time greatest thinkers is our best shot."

"And you feel that this is worth the chance that we might accidentally reset the timeline, possibly upheaving everything that has happened since or ever will happen?"

"Sure, because the chance of that happening is, as far as we can tell, zero―or next to it," Dr. Turnstead appended. Isabella cocked an eyebrow. "Look," he continued, "take Roberts' and Heinrich's experiment in 2120. They couldn't get their time traveling mice to be able to go back in time and kill their own grandfathers. They proved the Grandfather Paradox obeys the first  _'Theory'_  of Chronodynamics, thereby resolving the paradox once and for all. Something always happened to the mice before they could commit parricide. Nature seems to always predicate a particular chronology."

"You're taking an example from a paper that, if I remember correctly, was condemned by the scientific board of the time for its unethical treatment of the mice," Isabella countered.

"Wow, you do know your stuff," huffed Dr. Turnstead to himself.

"Not only that," Isabella continued, "but last time I checked, mice aren't humans. It will take more than a computer chip malfunction or a bout of flu or an unanticipated chemical imbalance in the brain to stop a human determined to upset the timeline, all things that confounded the results of that particular study."

"They only confound the results if you are assuming the first  _'Theory'_  of Chronodynamics is untrue. Which, last time  _I_  checked, most physicists don't."

Isabella, rather than immediately answer back, simply smiled as she chewed and swallowed the last bite of her dinner. "You know, Dr. Turnstead, there is at least one other well known puzzle that science has not yet been able to fully figure out."

Dr. Turnstead frowned. "And that is?"

* * *

"How to shrink down to the microscopic level," Suzy read aloud, for the benefit of the brutes who admitted they weren't so good at it. "Step one, enter the shrinking capsule and put on your seat belts. Step two, push the button that reads 'Shrink.' That will be the red one." She glanced at Meathead #1 to make sure he understood.

Meathead #1 turned to Meathead #2 once they were strapped in. "Do you have the poison?"

"I got it right here." He inserted the flask into the injection apparatus on the control port, then patted it gently.

* * *

"Human behavior," Isabella replied. "It can be reduced to chemistry, certainly. It can be explained by psychology, true. It can even be statistically modeled by biology. But only generally speaking, as in, with populations. An individual's behavior can never be predicted or modeled perfectly by any combination of these, or other, scientific disciplines. And all it takes is one individual to misuse a time machine to destroy the whole world, or at least everything as we know it."

Shaking his head, the professor was already making more gestures with his hands as if it helped him contain himself while waiting for his turn to speak. "But you're missing the bigger―"

"Dr. Turnstead," interjected Phineas as politely as he could, "you'll never convince her, believe me. If you want to do something about the time travel law, you should try running for president."

That caused him to take a deep sigh and push himself up from the table. "Well, it was very nice chatting with you all," he said, pushing the chair back in as he stood. "I should get back to my own dinner, it's probably getting cold. Good to see you again, Phineas."

"Good to see you too, Dr. Turnstead," replied the redhead.

* * *

The King had just finished padding and prodding his bowtie into the perfect shape when Suzy Johnson called. "We're ready to begin," was all she said. Humming to himself, he glanced one last time at the mirror before walking out of the bathroom and back to the gala. There was President Flynn, seated at the table with her family. He checked his pocket to make sure its contents had not been left behind, then strode up to the table.

"Apologies for my lateness," he said, taking his seat next to the platypus. "A call came in for me, had to take it."

"No problem, Mr. Konig," Phineas Flynn said, ever so cheerfully.

No sooner did The King sit down than some winged creature, smaller than a flea, ejected itself from his trouser cuff and crash landed under the table, completely unnoticed.

* * *

PJ had run a background check on the president of the Cincinnati Society earlier that week. Kyle Konig owned a small but very successful business that helped people research their family history and genealogy. Konig himself was descended from some soldier in the Revolutionary War, one Major John Armstrong, Jr. With his sandy blonde hair and emerald green eyes, the bachelor looked regally young for his almost-forty years. His profile had indicated nothing that connected him with Suzy Johnson except for one item: he was born in the Tri-State Area. It seemed to be a complete coincidence though, his family had moved away when he was barely a toddler. As the Secret Service had already thoroughly checked his person, PJ didn't see much need to be suspicious of him, so he kept his attention on what was happening elsewhere in the room.

Dinner was halfway over, so far without incident. That was not reason enough to let up his vigilance, for there was still ample opportunity for Suzy to make her move. PJ idly munched on his roll and trusted that his team were all doing their parts to guard the President, too.

"So is anybody going to talk about the reason we're here?" Isabella asked the table. "The letter?"

"It's kind of exciting, I guess," Phineas tried to say with his usual gusto. "Even though I could just hop in a time machine to tomorrow if I really wanted to see what it says."

Isabella elbowed him.

"What?" he asked, defensively. "All right, so these antique sorts of things were more my parents' cup of tea than mine."

"Perhaps if there were a rollercoaster involved," suggested Ferb.

"Bro, you said it," replied Phineas with a grin. "Maybe we could use that banner to make a slide, we'd just need to order a few parts…" He trailed off when he saw the look his wife was giving him. "What? You know I'm joking."

"That banner?" Konig asked, jutting a thumb over his shoulder. "The one with the Cincinnati Society motto displayed on it?  _Omnia Reliquit Servare Republicam._  'He left everything to serve the republic.'"

Phineas' face twisted into a rare frown. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean any disrespect."

Konig didn't seem to hear. "It was chosen in reference to the Roman citizen, Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus. According to legend, in 458 BCE, he was a farmer who answered the call to protect Rome from invaders. He assembled an army and conquered Rome's enemies, then turned around and freely gave up his dictatorial powers, trading in his sword for a plow, all in about two weeks." He paused to take in everyone's looks of surprise. "Oh, don't mind me, I'm just practicing for my speech."

Isabella opened her mouth. "I thought the quote was a reference to George Washington?"

Konig nodded. "The Society of the Cincinnati reveres George Washington so much because he likewise gave up all the power Congress had given him at the end of the Revolutionary War to return home to his farm and a life of peace." He tilted his head and looked at the President. "A lesson, I think, every President of the United States takes to heart?"

"Ever since I was a little girl," Isabella responded, "George Washington has always been a personal hero of mine. His leadership, his military achievements, his convictions, they have always inspired me." She glanced around the table. "That's why I wanted to speak tonight."

"And on behalf of the Cincinnati Society," Konig said, raising his glass with a gleam in his eye, "I thank you for offering."

Everyone at the table jumped when PJ slammed his paw down on the table, knocking over his plate and sending what was left of his food everywhere.

"What the?!" Isabella recoiled, her bodyguard jumping to her side immediately.

PJ was gasping for breath, clutching at his chest. He tried to push himself away from the table, but his arms were like jello.

"PJ, are you okay?" Phineas asked, catching PJ's swaying body. "What's the matter?"

"I―can't―breathe," he managed to say. He glared at his plate. "Food―poisoned!"

Ferb had come around the table and together, he and Phineas lifted PJ out of the chair and laid him on the ground. "Is the food poisoned?" Phineas looked up to the table and asked. Everyone looked at their empty plates with disdain.

"There's no way the food was poisoned," Isabella's bodyguard relayed, while listening through his earpiece. "It was prepared under careful supervision."

"Nobody else is having a reaction," Isabella said, looking around. Some of the nearby tables had vacated as people approached to watch.

"Ma'am, we should get you out of here," the Secret Service agent said, putting his hand around Isabella. She tried resisting.

"No, I'm fine!"

PJ was still choking for air on the floor, clawing at his left shoulder.

"He looks like he's having a heart attack," Konig observed.

"Ferb?"

Before Phineas' request was verbalized, Ferb had already extracted a scanning device that highly resembled a barcode reader. He pointed it at PJ's torso and held it at arm's length, watching the readings. After a couple of seconds, it beeped, and he nodded solemnly at his brother.

"It is a heart attack," Phineas confirmed.

Konig sighed with relief. "That's good." He caught what he was saying. "I mean, that is unfortunate for you," he told the brothers, before rising to his feet. "It's okay, everyone," he told the crowd with a loud voice as it was gathering. "It's not poison! The food is safe. You can all go back to your tables."

That did nothing to disperse the crowd, however; if anything, more people were gathering around to see what was happening.

"You're gonna be okay, PJ," Phineas said, kneeling over the platypus. Ferb stooped down as well, already having donned a stethoscope. "How are his vitals?"

Ferb answered with a look.

"How is he having a heart attack? He isn't seven yet, he's in great health; in platypus years, this should be the prime of his life!"

Ferb offered Phineas another glance.

"You're right," the redhead admitted, "he is cloned from Perry's DNA, his internal organs might have aged more quickly than in nature. PJ, hang in there, buddy!"

PJ was losing consciousness. Ferb gave Phineas another sharp look.

"He's going into cardiac arrest!" Phineas shouted at Isabella's bodyguard. "Get us a defibrillator, stat!"

The man nodded and turned aside, his finger pressed against his earpiece.

"PJ," Phineas said, "PJ, stay with us. Focus on the sound of my voice. We're gonna save you, okay? Just hold on!" He looked at Ferb, seeing the fear in his brother and best friend's eyes.

"He's not breathing! We need that defibrillator!"

Isabella looked away in horror when she saw Phineas bend over to start applying CPR.

* * *

_Somewhere in the Chesapeake mountains  
_ _The future..._

_The King battered his way up the overgrown path, and the platypus followed, hot on his trail. A dense patch of thick, green brush with nasty thorns caught at his robes, flaying the expensive gold threads, slowing his movement. He braced against the snag and tugged himself free, tearing his cloak in the process. Onwards he rushed, willing himself to go faster._

_Pine trees were everywhere, tall and mighty evergreens that blanketed the steep mountain banks. If his long legs were an advantage in flight, it was nullified by the slope he had to climb almost as it were a flight of stairs. Still, the crunching sounds of his pursuer seemed to fall behind. His goal lay just ahead. Only a few more bends in the path to go, if he remembered correctly. He was close, so close to reaching it―_

_The King burst into a small clearing. The grove of pine trees on the far side towered into the sky. He whipped around, still panting heavily, drawing his Glock. The platypus had to be close. Squinting down the sights, The King scanned for any signs of movement._

_The platypus darted around the final bend and into view. The King pulled the trigger, flinching as the hammer slammed down on the barrel. He had always been repulsed by the weight of the weapon and by the dirty work of killing things himself, and his lack of training showed. He missed his mark, allowing the platypus to dive behind the cover of a big pine trunk at the edge of the clearing, quite unharmed._

_Keeping the gun aimed at the base of the tree, The King backed away slowly. The platypus peeked around the left side of the trunk. He fired two more bullets into the tree to force him to retreat again behind it._

" _You know, usually, this is the part where the bad guy starts to monologue," the platypus said. "Telling me about their evil plan, about how their tragic backstory set them on a path inevitably leading them along to this very moment."_

_The King cautiously took another step back._

_The platypus peeked around the tree again. He fired one more round into the tree, but this time the platypus swooped out at unbelievable speed, close to the ground and practically on all fours. The King got off two more rounds before a beaver tail swiped across his hand, slapping the gun out of his grasp and knocking it clear across the grove._

_It was time for a new plan of attack. He ducked down and used his long legs to sweep the platypus' webbed feet out from under him, sending him tumbling to the ground. This gave The King a second or two, all the time that he needed. He shifted his weight backwards until he found the switch hidden in the dirt under his boot, then stepped on it._

_A steel cage fell from somewhere in the canopy above where it had been hidden. The platypus looked up just in time to see it threatening to ensnare him, and rolled out of the way._

" _No!" The King shouted. He tried to move, but his boot got caught up by the lever._

_A barrage of punches landed on The King, packing far more power than their deceptively small fists seemed capable of unleashing. The King felt himself keel over in pain to face plant into the ground, making him spit dirt out of his mouth while his arms were craned behind his back and snapped into restraints. The platypus stood on his shoulder triumphantly. "Your Conspirium is no more," he sneered._

_Only a few paces away, The King watched unnoticed, quite hidden by the trunk of another majestic pine, as his time-clone was cuffed by the platypus. His likeness was surely humiliated beyond degree, as he was led on a leash like a dog by the platypus back down the path they had just come up. Waiting until they were well out of earshot, The King finally stepped out into the clearing and approached the digital tree his other self had been striving to reach._

_He placed the palm of his hand against the bark, and the digital illusion vanished to be replaced by a biometric scanner and pale blue door. Also materializing was the outline of a tiny shed, the entrance to the Conspirium's secret underground bunker. When the scanner recognized his prints, it hissed softly and the door slid open, letting the soft glow of the interior lights shine on him. He regally paced down the steps to where his time machine awaited, stepped into its chair, and with the press of a button, he disappeared._

_He arrived back in his present. The blonde, golden curls of his first lieutenant, Suzy Johnson, were covering her face as she kneeled before him. "Welcome back, My King," she greeted._

" _Your plan failed," The King abruptly stated as he brushed across the room to plop himself wearily into his throne. "The platypus lives."_

_Suzy bowed her head. "Forgive me, O King."_

_With a snap of his fingers, The King got her to look up. "This recent string of failures is starting to get on my nerves!"_

_His tone made Suzy wince. "We were very close to killing him! And it was brilliant, too, because if we outright killed him, the Flynns were always going to send someone back in time to stop us, just like what happened last summer. But if they were made to think he died of_ natural causes _, they'd have mourned and buried him. We just had bad luck. At least we hid our tracks well enough that they still do not know we poisoned him. The shrinking drone was able to administer the dosage completely undetected, with no wound or mark left behind on the skin."_

" _Close isn't good enough!" The King slammed his fist down. Lowering his voice, he continued. "Right now, the platypus is the only thing stopping us from achieving our goals. I. Want. Him. Dead."_

_Suzy lowered her eyes and took a deep breath. "I understand, My King. Perhaps there is still a way to eliminate him."_

* * *

Washington, D.C.  
September 26, 2049

The room PJ found himself in was brilliantly lit. As he came to himself, he realized he was lying in a human sized hospital bed that was far too big for him. Every muscle he tried to move was sore.

"Hey, PJ," somebody said to his right. PJ looked over to find Phineas there, watching him rest.

He let his head fall back to be enveloped by the pillow. "What happened?"

"You had a heart attack," Phineas said. "We almost lost you."

"Did Suzy attack the President?"

Phineas sighed. "After your accident, the rest of the gala went off without a hitch. Kyle Konig gave his speech, Isabella gave hers, and then the letter from George Washington was read. Suzy didn't attack. As far as we can tell, it was a false alarm. Maybe the information you got was bad."

That didn't make sense to PJ. "No," he said, after thinking for a minute, "the information was good, our assumption about President Flynn―I mean, Isabella―wasn't. She wasn't the Conspirium's target.  _I_  was. The poison was intended for me."

"Now PJ, don't get ahead of yourself," Phineas said. "There's something you should know. Since you're a clone, it's very possible that your internal organs are aging faster than normal. It happens sometimes―you weren't poisoned. The cloning process occasionally results in the chromosomes forming shorter telomeres than normal births, and―"

"No," PJ said, confidently. He sat up in his bed to make his point to Phineas. "I must have been poisoned. I  _know_  it. Isn't there, like, some blood tests you can run, to check for toxins, or something?"

Phineas paused to consider it. "It's possible, maybe. I just don't think―"

"Then let's do it!"

"I―" Phineas hesitated.

"Are we going to test my blood, or not?"

"Okay, we'll run some tests, if it makes you feel better. But the blood tests they run in hospitals aren't exactly calibrated for a platypus. It'll take some time." Phineas took a deep breath, and PJ could tell he wasn't convinced. "Look, whether you were poisoned or not, we're just glad you're okay. Now get some rest, PJ. Marie's been dying to see you, so you're gonna need it."

He stood to leave, and PJ settled back down under the covers. His body may have been weak, but his mind raced to try to figure out what he'd missed about the Conspirium and Suzy. Any small detail he could have overlooked. He had to be close to finding out what they were planning next.


	7. Chapter 7

"We have breaking news…"

"A new story is developing…"

"This just in…"

"At a gala last night, hosted by the Cincinnati Society―"

"New evidence has been brought to light…"

"A shocking discovery…"

"Horrifying…"

"Gut-wrenching…"

"Shade is being cast on the legacy of America's first president, George Washington―"

"George Washington―"

"George Washington―"

"Fallen from grace in the public's eye…"

"Far-reaching historical ramifications…"

"A letter that contained―"

"Anti-palindrome epithets…"

"Vile anti-palindrome obscenities…"

"Anti-palindromic slurs…"

"Including use of the P-word…"

"The P-word―"

"More anti-palindrome sentiments are now being discovered in other documents written by George Washington…"

"Uncovering more anti-palindromic rhetoric…"

"What might be the biggest political scandal in memory…"

"George Washington's name is mud―"

"The historical inaccuracies have lead to the firing of hundreds of high school and college history teachers nationwide…"

"Many historians are being discredited…"

"Conspiracy theorists are having a field day…"

"It is well known that Washington was a Mason, he owned slaves, why are Americans surprised that he was also an anti-palindromist? …"

"Now this one historian is claiming that George Washington actually  _wasn't_  anti-palindromist…"

"Talk of banning the One Dollar Bill…"

"I was ashamed when my child asked me who George Washington was…"

"Can we rename Washington D.C. to something else, please?"

"This just in―"

"We're now learning that…"

"President Isabella Flynn―"

"―Spoke in support of Washington―"

"―At the same gala where Washington's anti-palindrome statements were discovered…"

"President Flynn was reported to have given high praise of Washington's character and legacy…"

"Saying, 'Washington has always been a hero to me'..."

"'Someone we should all strive to be like'…"

"President Flynn it seems may also hold anti-palindrome sentiments…"

"President Flynn is now claiming that she had no knowledge of George Washington's anti-palindromist views…"

"The President says she was not aware of that side of George Washington at the time she gave her speech…"

"Denies being an anti-palindromist…"

"Despite her public statements, President Flynn's popularity still plummets to all-time lows…"

"It seems the damage has already been done…"

"Americans are questioning why they ever voted for President Flynn…"

"Some Congressmen and women are calling for her impeachment…"

"Impeaching President Flynn…"

"President Flynn will not be impeached…"

"President Flynn will soon be impeached…"

"President Flynn might be resigning…"

"Rumors of impeachment are reportedly false…"

"Everyone is asking, why didn't we see this coming?"

"Has the timeline been changed?"

"Now NASA is being blamed―"

"Conspiracy theorists say NASA was hiding the Washington Scandal from the timeline from the beginning…"

"Some say their loved ones have not come back from the future since the apparent timeline-shift…"

"Physicists are stumped…"

"Russia, North Korea leave UN, severing diplomacy with America for first time in nearly a decade…"

"Phineas and Ferb say they are looking into the apparent timeline-shift…"

"Phineas and Ferb have lost America's trust, many believe―"

"―Moral character of the nation's leaders are in question…"

"Preppers are hoarding―"

"―Purchasing food, medicine, and other supplies in bulk quantities…"

"Believing that the end of the world is coming…"

* * *

Washington, D.C.  
September 28, 2049

In atypical Monday morning fashion, PJ trudged into his office and sank onto his chair, exhausted from the maelstrom that had been this weekend. He was angry. A heavy air pressed down on his team as well, who this morning were far from the supportive and encouraging folks they had been when they came to visit him in his recovery room at the hospital two days before. They all felt a little bit of the doom and gloom that had gripped the nation. Not even Eliot was bouncing about, cracking his usual jokes.

Normally, PJ was always totally focused and ready to roll up his sleeves and get to work, even on Mondays. He supposed today should have been different; after all, it was his first day back since being in the hospital. But after so much had happened over the weekend while he could do nothing but lay in bed, resting, arriving at work and greeting his team felt like something out of an eerie dream.

PJ decided to start the day with a short meeting, to get everyone focused. "I know a lot has been going on recently with the news," he said to start things off after calling everyone together, "but none of that concerns us. Our job is to find the Conspirium. We'll let the President's PR team worry about the politics."

"Sir," Olsen spoke, "with all due respect, since we were wrong about Suzy being at the gala, we're back to square one."

PJ raised an eyebrow. "Were we, though? Yesterday, Phineas and Ferb found residual levels of potassium chloride in my blood tests. My heart attack was no accident―I was poisoned."

When he saw the surprised looks on everyone's faces, PJ further explained. "The poison wasn't ingested. Toxicity levels suggest the serum was injected into my bloodstream somehow. Somebody from the Conspirium was there Friday night. And right now, the two top suspects are Dr. Nathaniel Turnstead and Kyle Konig." He counted them off on his fingers.

"The two men who sat next to you during the dinner," Coombs breathed.

"One of them had to be who injected me," PJ nodded. "But we couldn't find an injection site, oddly. We don't know how they did it, but Phineas and Ferb are working on it."

Eliot inhaled sharply, jumping in his seat to grab everyone's attention. "Phineas Flynn was also sitting next to you throughout the dinner!" he exclaimed. "Maybe it was him!"

Everyone gave him ridiculous looks.

"You're right," he retreated. "Bad idea."

PJ turned to the rest of his team. "So here's the plan. Waters and Olsen, I want the two of you to go see Dr. Turnstead. We don't have a warrant yet, so we can't search him. Until we do, you'll just have to watch him, poke around, ask some questions, do some digging. Tui and Willy, you're coming with me to see Konig. Eliot and Ramirez, you work on getting us search warrants, then help Coombs and Lee with reconnaissance. Send some time drones back a few days and tag them."

"Yes, sir!"

"If you find anything, report it to me immediately. It's very probable that one of these two people has been in contact with Suzy sometime within the last seventy-two hours, so stay focused, be observant, and let's go find the son of a gun who's behind all this!"

* * *

Lee led the way as Coombs, Eliot and Ramirez followed him down to the lab. It was a couple of floors down from where their offices resided, and though it was technically still above ground, there were no windows in this part of the building. Ceiling lights radiated a sterile, flickering glow in the sunlight's place. Lee halted at a door and hunched down to enter the five-digit security code before swinging the door open. They all entered to find themselves in a square room with computers and instruments lining all the walls, and four countertop islands separated from each other at evenly spaced intervals. Some basic tools were laid out on a couple of counters, while the remaining tables were spotlessly clean. Lee shrugged off a jacket and sat at a console near the first countertop like he was comfortably at home.

Coombs likewise took a seat and reached out to begin typing at a keyboard. Ramirez, who didn't specialize in technology, pulled up a chair behind them to watch, ready to be of assistance. Eliot, on the other hand, paced over to the nearest wall and began inspecting the various doohickeys, thingamabobs, and doodads.

"I wouldn't touch that if I were you," Lee said over his shoulder. "Pushing that button will instantly create a black hole and jeopardize the entire planet!"

Eliot froze with his finger extended toward the pale blue button on a electronic contraption the size of a microwave oven. After a moment, he slowly turned to give Lee an odd look. "Wait, you're telling me we have a black hole-generating machine just sitting here?"

Lee swiveled around, the grin on his face all but screaming, ' _gotcha!'_  "Well, it  _does_  produce 'black holes,' and they are dangerous―dangerously delicious!" He stood to reach up and press the button, and  _zap!_  In a flash of light, a plate of freshly baked chocolate donut holes materialized inside the box. Lee pulled open the down-swinging oven lid and popped one into his mouth. "See? Black holes."

"Oh!" Eliot grabbed one too, and took a bite. "Black  _donut_  holes!"

"And the button next to it  _also_  produces black holes," Lee said as he sat back down. "But really, it's just the switch that opens the chute the mail slides through." He swiveled around in his chair to make eye contact. "And seriously, don't touch anything." Once Eliot nodded, he swiveled back and returned to his work.

"Can't believe you guys never told the rest of us about these snacks," Eliot muttered as he hopped up to sit on the countertop island.

After a short spell of typing, the coding for the time drones was complete. An invention that was simultaneously any spy agency's most valuable tool and greatest nightmare, the drones were a masterpiece of mechanical miniaturization. To the naked eye, they were indistinguishable from fruit flies. On the inside, however, they were equipped with sophisticated cameras, ultraviolet and infrared sensors, audio recorders, and even their wings were covered in tiny solar panels so that their batteries recharged during the day. Despite weighing less than a tenth of a gram, they could collect and store up to 2 gigabytes of data each, when there wasn't a secure wifi connection for them to readily send files through. Tiny barbs on the drones' legs allowed them adhere to any surface, wall, or ceiling, spying on their targets completely undetected. The underside of the wings were also coated with a special UV-tinted paint that discouraged birds from eating them. Their biggest limit was that they could only fly at a top speed of about two knots, meaning they could be almost useless outdoors if there was any sort of headwind.

Coombs had already prepared a small box containing a batch of drones, and Lee initiated a program to download their specific instructions for this mission.

"Twelve drones," Coombs said in his slight lisp, a speech impediment that wasn't really his fault, considering he was born deaf. It was impressive he could speak as well as he did when he missed the chance to experience spoken language at the crucial developmental stages of his childhood. "The other three are damaged."

"So, we'll send six to Turnstead and six to Konig," Lee quickly decided. He hit a few keystrokes. "All right. Testing drone one." He typed a command, and the first drone noiselessly ascended to hover in the air. Lee nodded in approval as the other drones responded to his commands, one by one. "Everything looks good."

"I'll go get the time pod ready." Coombs arose and made his way over to the lab's time machine, on the far wall. This time machine was much too small for humans to travel in, but that was no problem, since it was designed specifically for the drones. Coombs opened the pod door and started hitting buttons on the control panel, while Lee directed the drones to fly as a swarm into the pod. It looked like a tiny whiff of smoke passing through the air as they stayed hovering close together to conserve energy.

Ramirez and Eliot watched in awe from the sidelines. Once the drones were inside the time pod and the door had been shut, Coombs activated the machine, and with a pop, it fired to life. Instantly, the drones vanished.

"So, how long until the drones get back?" Eliot asked.

"They're already here," responded Lee, who walked briskly to the lab door and opened it. "I programmed them to arrive back at the lab at precisely this time." Sure enough, in flew a couple of barely perceptible specks. "One, two, three," Lee counted. "Four, there's five, and six? That's it? Only six?" He stuck his head out and checked both directions in the hallway.

"What happened to the others?" Ramirez asked.

"They are never late," Lee pondered aloud, "and sometimes birds will still eat one or two, but six? That is unlikely." He sat back down at his computer station to start decrypting the data from the six punctual drones. "The only other possibility is that the rest of the drones were damaged―or discovered―somehow."

* * *

"So the other six drones never returned?" PJ asked through his communicator.

"All the drones that were sent to target Konig never returned," Lee summed up. "We have only just started to analyze the data from the drones that returned, and so far we haven't seen anything suspicious about Turnstead. But for all six of the drones that were assigned to Konig to vanish, that can't be a coincidence."

"That makes sense," PJ said. "I had a feeling Konig was the one. He's gotta be our link to Suzy and the Conspirium."

"So what now, boss?" Eliot's voice crackled.

PJ rotated his communicator's camera so that it shared his view out the window. "We're looking at Konig's front porch right now. Sensors indicate the house is empty. He's not here."

* * *

Wordlessly, PJ, Tui, and Willy had been watching the electronic touchscreen on the vehicle dash for almost half an hour, waiting for the confirmation of their search warrant authorization. At last, the notification popped up on the screen.

Immediately, PJ said, "There's our green light! Let's go!"

The platypus led the way to the front door and rapped hard on its wood varnish. "This is Agent PJ, from the Department of Homeland Security," he shouted. "Open up!"

Without even waiting after the courtesy knock for anyone to answer, PJ stepped aside and jerked his head toward the door, giving the two gigantic men permission. Together, they kicked in unison, knocking the door clean off its hinges. It fell inward and slammed flat onto the floor. PJ waited for them to walk inside before entering last.

The front room looked more like a museum than a sitting room. Glass displays showcased old-looking historical documents and antiques, such as a Confederate soldier uniform, an early design of the American flag, coins and medallions, and the corroded barrel of a flintlock pistol. On the wall, a large painted portrait hung, the label declaring it as belonging to one General Horatio Lloyd Gates.

Tui and Willy had already moved on to search elsewhere, and PJ pushed on behind them. Past the front room, the rest of the dwelling looked uninhabited. There were more glass display cases running throughout the parlor. These transitioned flawlessly into some furniture in the main living room, where everything was covered under protective plastic drapes, which themselves had a significant layer of dust. It was clear the house had not seen much use in at least the last year. PJ pulled the plastic sheet off a bookcase to inspect the various tomes, even pulling at a couple like he was checking for secret passages.

Thundering footsteps were coming his way. PJ looked up to see Tui and Willy re-enter the room. Tui was carrying a recording device. "Sir," he said, handing the recorder over, "we found this. It says it's for you."

"What says it's for me?" PJ took the recorder and ran his hands over it.

"The sticky note that was stuck to it," Tui said, giving him the slip of paper next.

The note was written in delicate handwriting.  _To PJ the Platypus. With Love, From SJ_.

"Suzy Johnson," PJ snarled. "She knew we'd be here." He hit the playback button, and held it up so they could all listen.

"How's it going, PJ? It's been a while." Suzy's pitchy, saccharine drawl was unmistakable. "Sorry about slipping you that poison at dinner the other night. I promise, it was nothing personal. Well, maybe it was a  _little_  bit personal! Ehehe!

"It's your own fault, though. You keep interfering in the Conspirium's business, and The King isn't happy about it! Oh, we've tried blowing you up, staging crashes, shooting you, but whenever we kill you, Phineas and Ferb always go back in time and warn you of your impending death. Then we have to cover our tracks by going back to stop ourselves from killing you, over and over... It's getting ANNOYING!" Her voice turned shrill. She paused, then resumed in her normal, sugary tone.

"Fortunately, the game of chess is finally over. You and your country are already in checkmate. So consider this your final warning, platy-breath. You still have enough time to save  _most_  of the ones you love―if you leave, now. If you don't, you will lose  _everything!_

"If you don't believe me, just know, we've been watching you for a long time." PJ turned to the window and peeked through the shutters. "We've been perfecting our plan for even longer. The future is certain. We will win. I have already been there and seen it!"

Suzy erupted in a laugh of utter wickedness. "It is glorious! And it all starts today! The day of the Final Revolution! A day that will be remembered for a thousand years, when the lies of freedom and democracy finally died!"

She twittered in laughter again. "The choice is yours, PJ. Or, maybe it isn't. After all, I already saw what you're going to do next. That's the funny thing about time travel. It makes you wonder if we really do have any free will at all. Well, since we both know you won't quit, guess that means I'll be seeing you soon. Tata!"

With a beep, the recording ended. PJ furiously hurled the device at the floor and stomped on it, smashing it to bits. He was shaking in anger, his breathing labored. Looking up to see that Tui and Willy were watching him closely, he balled up his fists to prevent his shaking hands from showing.

"Now what do we do?" Willy inquired.

"Who is 'The King?'" Tui added.

"How did Suzy know we'd be here?"

"There can't be a revolution, can there? I thought nobody could change the future?"

"Can the Conspirium do that?"

"I don't know," PJ said, stopping the cascade of questions. "I don't know any of those answers. But here's what I do know. Kyle Konig is the closest link to Suzy we have. We know he was at the gala Friday night, so we're going back in time to arrest him right then and there. And then he is going to take us to Suzy. And if that doesn't work, we'll go back further in time, to when Suzy was still working for the CIA. And if that doesn't work, we'll keep going back, all the way to the day she was born, if we have to, to stop her from doing whatever it is she's about to do. I don't care if we'll be breaking the laws, I don't care if we'll be preemptively arresting her before she ever committed a crime. She's too dangerous. She has got to be stopped. We're putting an end to all this, once and for all!"

The platypus marched out the door, his tiny body radiating all the testiness of a confined and hungry tiger. Tui and Willy glanced at each other before following.

PJ already had his communicator out. "Lee, get the department's time machine ready, and call in Olsen and Waters. I want everyone ready to time jump ASAP!" He swung open the agency vehicle door for Tui and Willy to climb in before entering himself. "Have it ready by the time we get there."

With that, he snapped his communicator shut and punched the emergency button on the auto-nav. The car's siren began whirring loudly as the vehicle lifted off the ground and flew towards headquarters at full speed.

Before PJ could get fully settled in, the auto-nav screen lit up with an alert. "An emergency is being reported in the downtown D.C. area," a cool, feminine voice in the computer system informed him. "I may not be able to take a direct route to HQ."

"What now?" PJ demanded the computer.

"Police scanners indicate a riot broke out an hour ago. Multiple shootings have occured. Twelve people are confirmed dead. The Metropolitan Police Department have so far been unable to contain the violence."

"Then give me control," PJ said, assuming the driver's seat.

"Manual control confirmed," the computer calmly stated. PJ took the wheel and revved the engines to full thrust.

"A riot?" Tui asked from the backseat. "How the heck did a riot break out? Where are the temporal control officers?"

Willy connected his tablet to the car's wifi and brought up the news. "Oh, jeez," he said. "The riot broke out during a huge protest of the city name―something about wanting to rename it something other than 'Washington.' Shots were fired, and with thousands of protesters there, the officers are overwhelmed. Oh, jeez," Willy repeated, looking more closely at his screen. "It says Ezekiel Okeko was spotted, and his gang is taking credit for escalating the protest."

"Okeko?" Tui shook his head in disbelief. "What's he doing out of LA?"

"His last name is a palindrome," explained Willy. "Must've been triggered by George Washington being anti-palindromist."

"Oh, jeez," Tui agreed. "Sir," he turned to PJ, "maybe we shouldn't take the route through the riot. With Ezekiel Okeko behind it, things could be real ugly down there."

"We'll make it," PJ said simply. The flying car jerked forward through the air as he accelerated.

"I'm bringing up a live broadcast of the riot," Willy announced as he tapped his screen.

"―Sheer pandemonium," a male news investigator was reporting on scene. "As you just saw, the two men with rifles were seen pushing people away from the iconic statue of George Washington at Washington Circle. We cannot confirm if the armed men wore the signature tattoos and scars of Okeko gang members at this time. Their intentions with the statue were also unclear. Now, if you look just thirty yards this way, you'll see―"

A loud blast cut off the reporter's next words. The camera was correspondingly knocked over by the concussion. Quickly, the image re-stabilized, zooming in to focus on a cloud of smoke.

Rising to his feet, the reporter continued his commentary. "Oh my goodness! That blast came from the George Washington statue! Let's see if we can get a closer look…" The camera followed the reporter as he pushed through the crowd towards the column of smoke. "The smoke is starting to clear up now―it looks like the statue was blown up!" The camera struggled at first to penetrate the dust and smoke, but slowly, the image began to clear. True to his words, the base of the statue was all that could be seen amidst some debris and rubble.

The reporter turned to face the camera properly. "It appears that the iconic statue of George Washington riding a horse has been blown up, possibly by Okeko's gang. From here, we can see some bystanders who were injured by the blast. The riot is continuing to spiral out of control."

"It looks bad down there," Tui said over Willy's shoulder.

"Well, we're in a flying car," PJ pointed out, "so we should be fine." He looked out the windshield ahead at the oncoming building high rises. The riot was going on somewhere in the streets below those landmarks.

PJ stopped listening to the continuing news reports coming from Willy's device in the back and scanned the airstrip ahead, designating the allocated flight path for his vehicle. They were approaching the city limits from the northwest. HQ was just across town, on the other side of the Anacostia river. Probably due to the riot, there was little traffic in their airstrip, and they were making good time. That would change if they took a different route. They couldn't turn south, because in that direction lie the heart of the Capital, a strict no-fly zone, except for in rare cases of extreme national emergency, such as evacuating the President. On the other hand, if they veered east, they would have to take the highway all the way around the city, which would take at least an extra fifteen minutes, if not more with the extra traffic being diluted that way.

In this day and age, time is always relative. Maybe taking the safer route wouldn't hurt, PJ thought to himself.

His communicator broke him out of that train of thought. "Agent PJ, sir?" Coombs' voice strained to enunciate.

"Go ahead."

"Olsen and Waters just made it back in the teleporter. The time machine is ready, we're just waiting for your orders, sir."

"Hold your position," PJ commanded. "Wait for Tui, Willy, and me to get back. We're coming over the riot in downtown D.C., but we shouldn't be long."

Coombs copied that. PJ set his communicator back down and sped on ahead. A police barricade had been set up, forcing PJ to slow down. When the official manning the barricade saw that the car was US Government issued and PJ had his siren on, he didn't hesitate to wave him through the perimeter of the riot. PJ accelerated again. They were just passing over the tops of some of the taller buildings in the financial district now. A quick glance showed that one of the nearby rooftops held a couple of people on it, perhaps looking to escape the streets. PJ didn't bother to look any closer as he was focused on driving. Just then, an alarm on the dash started screaming at him.

"WARNING! MISSILE INCOMING! WARNING!"

PJ reflexively checked his rearview mirror, where he saw it. One of the folks on that rooftop had fired a rocket-propelled grenade at them. The highly trained agent didn't stop to ponder the ramifications of that information. Reacting immediately, he had just enough time to swerve, causing the RPG to deliver a glancing blow rather than impact them head on. The explosion rocked the flying car, jolting PJ so much his arms went slightly numb at the steering wheel.

The vehicle spun out of control. PJ fought with the thrusters to control the spiral, yet they plummeted toward the highrises like a wounded Apache helicopter. They didn't fall far before they crashed into the side of one of the buildings, smashing all their reinforced, bullet-proof windows. The brick and concrete wall held, causing the car to ricochet back and arc the rest of the way down. It hit the pavement with a wail of wrenching metal and screeching steel before they skidded to a stop.

Grunting at the strain of lifting his head, PJ felt a brief wave of nausea and disorientation as he looked out the broken glass. They were at least right-side up. He checked himself. A couple of bumps and bruised, nothing appeared to be broken.

"Tui? Willy? You all right?" he called back.

Willy coughed a little. "I've had worse. Remember that linebacker from Georgia Tech that laid me out?"

"Yeah, that dude was mean," Tui replied.

PJ sighed with relief before unclipping his safety belt. He pushed against the door to find it wedged shut, so he crawled through the gaping windshield instead. A loud grunt and the sound of metal crumpling told him that Tui had managed to force the door open.

Clapping his hands to get the dust off, PJ looked up to gather in his surroundings. The street sat in the shadow of a manmade valley, channelled between rows of dizzyingly tall buildings serving as artificial mountains. There were a handful of onlookers, staring in shock, having been interrupted from whatever business they had near the crash moments ago. It appeared that there was not much action going on, then he noticed that all the businesses in sight had already had all their ground-level windows smashed in. The riot was here, it had just moved on.

Behind him, Tui and Willy had extracted themselves from the smashed chassis. PJ reached for his communicator. "Coombs, are you still there?"

Silence. Checking his communicator more closely, he saw that it had a huge crack along its side. He tossed it away and looked at his agents. They had pulled their tactical gear from the wreckage and were inspecting it for further damage.

PJ saw movement out of the corner of his eye. "Strap up," he told them as he reached out and was handed his assault gear from Willy. "We're about to have company."

More humans, whom he could tell were clearly looking for trouble, were slithering out of the nearest hole in the building they had collided with. PJ hurriedly shrugged on his kevlar vest and strapped his sidearm to his belt just as they reached talking distance. PJ quickly took a count of the various sneering, bandanaed, and sullen faces. Over two dozen. He could smell a fight.

PJ raised his weapon―a smaller variant of the Beretta M9 model that was specially issued for him due to his size―and fired a bullet into the air. "That's close enough," he told them, leveling his arm to swoop his gun across them. "We don't want any trouble."

"That's them, all right," one of the hoodlums said through rotting teeth. "The talking platypus? Suzy was right."

The color drained from PJ's face.  _Oh, no, Suzy is behind this, too._

He didn't let his reaction show, but brought the barrel of his gun round to point at the one who spoke. "You shut your mouth, dog. I don't want to see those disgusting teeth again."

The thug's eyes popped slightly in fear. He glanced at his companions. Like a concerto where the instruments were the clicking of cocked guns and swooshing sounds of moving hands, they all raised their weapons at PJ and his men. Tui and Willy drew their firearms in sync with the mob. Three against many. One could hardly call it a standoff.

Now finding himself gazing down well over twenty barrels, PJ knew he was had. "Okay," he said, showing his paws, and slowly lowering his pistol. "You win." He laid it on the pavement. He made eye contact with his agents, and Willy and Tui did the same.

Then, quick as a flash, PJ snatched a grenade-like orb from his belt and threw it high over his head. The device clicked, activating its core of powerful neodymium magnets. Before anyone in the mob knew what had happened, every gun was sucked out of their hands, into the sky, and squished into a compact ball of rods and barrels, wound around the grenade. There was a flash as the grenade's thermobaric charges ignited, blinding everyone who didn't look away in time and instantly vaporizing the entire blob of metal.

_BANG!_

PJ, Tui, and Willy charged. The mob was disoriented from the explosion, and it made for easy pickings. PJ leapt up to the shoulders of his nearest attacker and threw all his weight behind his knuckles as he punched the center of the man's nose. From there, he sprang over and kicked mightily at the man standing beside him. And so he went, flying from person to person, striking them ferociously.

Willy and Tui thundered across their foes like juggernauts, picking them up, bodily throwing them across the street, knocking others out with just a single punch. With all their advanced training in hand-to-hand combat, they hardly ever even took a hit themselves, and when they did, it didn't even seem to faze them. Meanwhile, anyone they were able to land a hit on would be instantly on the ground, and lucky to get back up.

Being the smallest and most agile person in the skirmish, PJ adjusted and began zigging and zagging underfoot of his assailants to further confuse and disorient them. He'd tuck under a kick or a punch and roll behind the next guy, getting behind them to have an easy crack at a joint or pressure point before dodging and twirling around another guy to do it again. He zipped between one pair of legs, simultaneously swinging up with his tail to deliver a painful blow to the sap's family jewels. Then he leapt up into the air to avoid being toppled on, using his momentum to power an uppercut combo to one of the goons Willy had just tossed like a rag doll in his direction.

Something grabbed him from behind and threw him. PJ braced for a hard landing, but fell on one of the unconscious bodies left in Tui's wake, cushioning him nicely. He got back up, and saw that it was the same ugly dog with the rotted teeth. PJ charged, feinting a punch and then instead sliding between the thug's feet. He grabbed a ankle and yanked as he passed through. The rioter was caught completely by surprise and fell on his face. PJ speedily pounced on his back, grabbed him by the hair, and smashed his head against the pavement, knocking him out cold.

PJ stood up to catch his breath and was able to see Tui and Willy finish off the the last of the company. Now the street was littered with a bunch of bludgeoned, bruised, and bloody bodies, which oddly made the sight of the crashed car look slightly less out of place. Tui, having delivered the final blow, was joined by Willy in a fully choreographed dance where they pretended to spike a football, initiated a series of about a dozen high-fives in various poses and accompanied by a lot of "heys!" and "oh yeahs," and then jumped together and bumped chests in midair. Their touchdown celebration dance from their college days, he realized. It made him snort and shake his head. They weren't out of this yet.


End file.
